The ancient struggle was not having enough.

The modern struggle is having too much.

Too much news, too much sugar, too much of everything at your fingertips..There's only 1 way out.

Let's lay it out:

On one side, you have "Team Dopamine":
* 24/7 news cycle, full of clickbait headlines
* Social Media, friend's pics that disappear in 24 hours
* Endless varieties of sugar & porn

going up against your tiny, 3 pound brain running 20,000 yr old software
Even if you are a smart person who tries their best to stay healthy & happy... you are going up against Fox News, TikTok, PornHub, Robinhood, Instagram

These are weapons of mental destruction.
Thousands of our smartest engineers & data scientists work at these companies.

They run constant experiments. Fighting against each other for every moment of your attention. So you open THEIR app.

It's skinner's box, rats pushing buttons for rewards. But you're the lab rat.
So what do we do?

We have everything. More than any species, at any time period in history. It's wonderful...but also deadly.

Food injected with syrup sugar
Painkillers you can't live without
Video games where you can fly and kill
Porn better than any date you'll ever have
we used to live in tribes, fighting other tribes for scarce resources.
now we live alone, fighting our urges against endless options.

How to resist day trading on Robinhood? Swiping on Tinder? Or pushing a button on DoorDash & getting chicken wings delivered to your condo
The answer is self-defense.

Defense from yourself.

Preventing yourself from getting addicted to stuff that's so god damn addictive.

This is a skill. A skill worth building.

Here's how I think it plays out.
Fasting is easier than dieting.

I think people begin to do technology fasts.

Like intermittent fasting. They'll create an 12 hour "online" period, followed by a 12 hour "offline" period (8hrs sleep, 2 eating, 1 exercising, 1 hour offline hobby)

Airplane mode, at home.
More and more people will start to carry "dumb devices" (eg. the Lightphone) and create "Zen Rooms" that have no screens or wifi.

Apps like Calm will grow. Hobbies like gardening, tabletop games, and outdoor adventure will continue to rise in popularity.
Just as most people in America are on track for obesity due to shitty food diets

most people will stay hooked to the fast food information diet of facebook, instagram, slack, and CNN.

But 1% will recognize the problem, and can afford to fight back.
And maybe founders will start building services that ask LESS of you.

> less attention, more intention
> less sitting, more moving
> less options, more choice
> less noise, more signal
> less feeds, more curation

who will build the "Whole Foods" brand of tech?
..of course if you're reading this on twitter... you're already in the wrong place ;)
I send out startup ideas like this 2x a week on my newsletter: https://t.co/hyXkTjtm0Q

More from Shaan Puri

More from Tech

On Wednesday, The New York Times published a blockbuster report on the failures of Facebook’s management team during the past three years. It's.... not flattering, to say the least. Here are six follow-up questions that merit more investigation. 1/

1) During the past year, most of the anger at Facebook has been directed at Mark Zuckerberg. The question now is whether Sheryl Sandberg, the executive charged with solving Facebook’s hardest problems, has caused a few too many of her own. 2/
https://t.co/DTsc3g0hQf


2) One of the juiciest sentences in @nytimes’ piece involves a research group called Definers Public Affairs, which Facebook hired to look into the funding of the company’s opposition. What other tech company was paying Definers to smear Apple? 3/ https://t.co/DTsc3g0hQf


3) The leadership of the Democratic Party has, generally, supported Facebook over the years. But as public opinion turns against the company, prominent Democrats have started to turn, too. What will that relationship look like now? 4/

4) According to the @nytimes, Facebook worked to paint its critics as anti-Semitic, while simultaneously working to spread the idea that George Soros was supporting its critics—a classic tactic of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. What exactly were they trying to do there? 5/
One of the best decisions I made during a very turbulent 2020 was to leave conventional coding behind and embrace the #nocode movement. @bubble made this a reality. Although my own journey thus far is premature, I’ve learned a lot so here’s a power thread on....


‘How I created @buildcamp sales funnel landing page in under 2hours’.

Preview here 👇

https://t.co/s9P5JodSHe

Power thread here 👇

1. Started with a vanilla bubble app ensuring that all styles and UI elements were removed. Created a new page called funnel and set the page size to 960px as this allows the page to render proportionately on both web and mobile when hitting responsive breakpoints.


2. Began dropping elements onto the page to ‘find the style’. These had to be closely aligned to our @buildcamp branding so included text, buttons and groups - nothing too heavy. Played around with a few fonts, colors and gradients and thus pinned down the following style guide.


3. Started to map out sections using groups as my ‘containers’ to hold the relevant information and imagery needed to pad out the sales pitch. At this point, they were merely blocks of color #ff6600 with reduced opacity set to 5% to ease page flair.

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प्राचीन काल में गाधि नामक एक राजा थे।उनकी सत्यवती नाम की एक पुत्री थी।राजा गाधि ने अपनी पुत्री का विवाह महर्षि भृगु के पुत्र से करवा दिया।महर्षि भृगु इस विवाह से बहुत प्रसन्न हुए और उन्होने अपनी पुत्रवधु को आशीर्वाद देकर उसे कोई भी वर मांगने को कहा।


सत्यवती ने महर्षि भृगु से अपने तथा अपनी माता के लिए पुत्र का वरदान मांगा।ये जानकर महर्षि भृगु ने यज्ञ किया और तत्पश्चात सत्यवती और उसकी माता को अलग-अलग प्रकार के दो चरू (यज्ञ के लिए पकाया हुआ अन्न) दिए और कहा कि ऋतु स्नान के बाद तुम्हारी माता पुत्र की इच्छा लेकर पीपल का आलिंगन...

...करें और तुम भी पुत्र की इच्छा लेकर गूलर वृक्ष का आलिंगन करना। आलिंगन करने के बाद चरू का सेवन करना, इससे तुम दोनो को पुत्र प्राप्ति होगी।परंतु मां बेटी के चरू आपस में बदल जाते हैं और ये महर्षि भृगु अपनी दिव्य दृष्टि से देख लेते हैं।

भृगु ऋषि सत्यवती से कहते हैं,"पुत्री तुम्हारा और तुम्हारी माता ने एक दुसरे के चरू खा लिए हैं।इस कारण तुम्हारा पुत्र ब्राह्मण होते हुए भी क्षत्रिय सा आचरण करेगा और तुम्हारी माता का पुत्र क्षत्रिय होकर भी ब्राह्मण सा आचरण करेगा।"
इस पर सत्यवती ने भृगु ऋषि से बड़ी विनती की।


सत्यवती ने कहा,"मुझे आशीर्वाद दें कि मेरा पुत्र ब्राह्मण सा ही आचरण करे।"तब महर्षि ने उसे ये आशीर्वाद दे दिया कि उसका पुत्र ब्राह्मण सा ही आचरण करेगा किन्तु उसका पौत्र क्षत्रियों सा व्यवहार करेगा। सत्यवती का एक पुत्र हुआ जिसका नाम जम्दाग्नि था जो सप्त ऋषियों में से एक हैं।