Do Things that Don’t Scale

Some of the best advice I ever got from Ramit Sethi was "Do things that don't scale."

When running a business, all of the common advice focuses on scaling. Can the work be done faster/cheaper/with fewer people?

But, when we overfocus on scaling, we lose our humanity. We see the results of this daily with the enshittification of products, customer service, and the internet as a whole.

When we do things that *don't* scale, we actually take the time. We respond to our students thoughtfully, even if it takes a few more minutes. We actually read (and respond) to the emails we get from real humans who are asking for help. We do the thing that makes us human.

These aren't the sorts of actions that have immediate payoff, which is why we avoid them.

But the long term benefits of being an actual person in a world full of overworked bots can't be ignored.