Pursuits That Can’t Scale

The antidote to burnout and the existential inquiry it brings seems to be doing things that don’t scale in pursuit of things that can’t scale. It becomes exciting not to see what you can do without limits, but to see what you can do with them.

I think another driver of this sentiment and behavior is that chasing scale strips you of some humanity. It puts your head too high up in the clouds. It removes you from what happens in the real world with real people. Pursuing something that can’t scale does the exact opposite: it grounds you. It’s a comforting and healing next act.

I once wrote that every entrepreneur’s dream is to succeed at building an impossibly hard business and then finally open a local coffee shop to be happy.

One of my favorite pieces of modern wisdom ever uttered comes from Jim Carrey:

“I’ve often said that I wish people could realize all their dreams and wealth and fame so that they could see that it’s not where you’re going to find your sense of completion ... No matter what you gain, ego will not let you rest. He will tell you that you cannot stop u

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I have a theory that chasing things that scale makes you need therapy, and the therapy is pursuing things that can’t scale .

II

I once wrote that every entrepreneur’s dream is to succeed at building an impossibly hard business and then finally open a local coffee shop to be happy.

I think another driver of this sentiment and behavior is that chasing scale strips you of some humanity. It puts your head too high up in the clouds. It removes you from what happens in the real world with real people. Pursuing something that can’t scale does the exact opposite: it grounds you. It’s a comforting and healing next act.

I have a theory that chasing things that scale makes you need therapy, and the therapy is pursuing things that can’t scale .

II

I once wrote that every entrepreneur’s dream is to succeed at building an impossibly hard business and then finally open a local coffee shop to be happy.

chasing scale strips you of some humanity. It puts your head too high up in the clouds. It removes you from what happens in the real world with real people. Pursuing something that can’t scale does the exact opposite: it grounds you. It’s a comforting and healing next act.

Perhaps most instinctually, people just want to do things and get better at t... See more

One way to rationalize this is that after being in the driver’s seat of such a large-scale, fast-paced effort, it’s hard for people to do nothing at all or go back to working for someone else. So pursuing something that can’t scale is a happy medium — maintaining full autonomy and control without the stress of chasing scale (and all that comes with... See more