The Borsalino Test #2: Popsicles, granitas, and waters
Hi friends!
I decided to start this newsletter as an evolving collection of strings that could someday be spun into a larger story. For now, I will publish here my essays that cross between tech, personal growth, and decision making.
Through writing, I try to give back what I enjoy learning: how to think, wait, and fast. Arguably, that’s most of what you need: good decision-making rules, a long-term plan, and uncommon resilience to withstand difficulties.
Why ‘The Borsalino’s Hat Test’? Everyone who's read Shantaram, my favorite novel, would find this redundant. The Borsalino is this wide-brimmed hat made from very particular furs. This piece of art apparently digs quite the hole in your pocket, and there's bound to be fakes. In comes the Borsalino hat test. You roll the hat up into tube thingy and make it pass through a wedding ring. After emerging from the other side, if there are no creases, you've got yourself a deal. Most will argue Borsalino tests are part of life.
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Popsicles, granitas, and waters: the race for consumer mindshare
A glass of water
Social distancing has significantly rummaged our schedules. We either swapped all our in-person meetings with video calls or just freed up chunks of personal time for ourselves. In my circle of friends (and probably in yours too) we initially rushed to test the best tech alternative to in-person socials (e.g., Houseparty, or, God forbid, Zoom happy hours, ...). It would be a stretch to say that shift in behavior did eventually stick.
On one hand, we dial into a ton more Zoom calls to ensure the synchronicity of our work teams. When it comes to friends and family though, it’s a whole different ball game. Those are not mandatory interactions, we actively seek them. We set aside uninterrupted hours of our weekends to venture on a hike or feast over meals. Then why on earth should we allocate so much time now for a much clunkier, bland tech substitute for that experience?
Let’s say each day, we fill out our glass (24 hours) with water, which can convert into different states: solid, liquid, or even a hybrid halfway physical condition (think snow or a sorbet-like consistency). We are invariably allocating time and mindshare across and between options to alleviate pain, maximize our dopamine, or invest in our future selves, while at the same time attempting to fulfill our responsibilities with work, family, and personal health. I am fascinated by how tech products race to pour water in our glasses.
Popsicles
In 1999, my dad secured a deal for my first PC. It was a hefty gray case, with a boxy monitor towering on my desk. I mostly adopted that machine as a console and played a lot of video games. I would indulge in ‘Age of Empires’ for a couple of hours a session, and my dad would make sure I won’t spend too much time in front of a screen. I used to love games: for those couple of hours, I got to submerge into reality like no other.
Today it’s especially rare for me to spend a couple of hours glued at a desktop screen performing the exact same activity with barely any interruption. Sure, I am constantly connected, yet my focus speedballs between texts, notifications, emails, and Slack messages. Every day, we spread our eye share across an average of 56 apps and websites: it is uniquely challenging to carve time for uninterrupted, lasting immersive experiences.
This category of consumer products is the toughest to fit into a schedule, hence the hardest to earn for tech companies. It’s fun to imagine these products as popsicles: stiff blocks of contiguous time that don’t leave much room in the glass for anything else. Therefore, popsicles make the trade-off with other experiences really hard, so they must be really worth it, or perceived as scarce. Synchronous, multiplayer, live activities carry all the right ingredients for a tasty popsicle.
Video games are definitionally immersive worlds and hold a great command over our attention span. On average, Twitch users spend 95 minutes a day studying professionals playing live. Zoom calls are the quintessential popsicle of the quarantine era, especially for people managers: blue ice blocks served in two sizes (30 or 60 minutes slots), often adjacent to each other to squeeze more ice sculptures into the glass. Great TV shows can turn into popsicles too. Even though asynchronous, they can be immensely engaging and hard to trade off: I would keep my phone out of the room when binging ‘The Last Dance’.
Granitas
I haven’t played video games in years. I am inclined to reckon I don’t have enough time anymore for that. And yet, when I pop my screen time stats, I learn with great surprise that I can easily rack up 30 minutes a day on Twitter. And I am obviously not alone: the average internet user spends way above 2 hours a day on social networking. So, am I really being accurate when I tell myself I don’t have time anymore?
A little over a decade ago, the computer became pocketable. The original use case was about making the passive presentation of information accessible not just at any time convenient to the viewer, but also anywhere. With smartphones morphing into the new paradigm, messaging and social media evolved into the killer consumer products of this era. While the home telephone enabled real-time, synchronous communication, messaging built the railways of constant communication. Conversations are never-ending, and friends come and go at a pace dictated not by the physicality of the device, but rather by attention.
All humans crave human interaction, affection, and validation. Hence, we are more than happy to trade massive amounts of mindshare to messaging and social media, who are always there in our pockets and purses. Mobile messaging and social media shattered popsicles of engagement into granitas: semi-frozen, sugary desserts that permeate every nook and cranny of our days. For most of us, a single email notification would suffice to get us sucked into a vortex of Gmail speedballing.
Mobile asynchronous communication sparked a Cambrian revolution at the very core of consumer technology. Before you would leverage a landline, or a PC to transmit your message faster. Now, is the job to get a message to your friends fast, or is messaging just a tool for the actual job to be done? By melting the atomic unit of engagement into small bits of scrolling, replying back, and validating through a ‘like’ button, the experience of social connection evolved into something more ephemeral, yet constantly present.
Waters
I love sticking my nose into quality non-fiction reads at night before bed. While I very much enjoy the sensory experience of handling a physical book, recently I have been tinkering with audiobooks and devoured a number of podcasts too. Audio products convert ear share into learning or entertainment time. Whether you are flipping omelets for breakfast, lounging at the airport, or commuting to work, all you need to engage with quality content is popping in some earbuds.
I think of audio as a ‘liquid’ category of products - waters. What sets waters apart is their ability to seep into hidden crevices, as they don't require dominant attention. Waters are also positive-sum, instead of zero-sum as solid or semi-solid consumer products like popsicles and granitas: I would crank up my ‘Daily Mix 1’ on Spotify to perform focused work or tune in to the ‘The Knowledge Project’ podcast when folding the laundry at home. In a way, they increase the size of the glass.
People are already spending a lot of time on podcasts, and it’s growing: listeners are consuming 6+ hours per week and eating up more content every year. In this space, the flywheel is spinning: hardware layers such as the AirPods and smart speakers further encourage high-quality audio content to flow into this space. There are now over 700K free podcasts available. What may surprise people living in heavy commuter markets is that listening primarily happens at home, which represents almost half of all podcast consumption.
Curiously enough, ice texture and permeability matter as well. I am constantly listening to something when grocery shopping or biking to the gym. However, audio content does not percolate when attempting to craft a long email or crunch numbers on a spreadsheet. Depending on the type of ‘popsicle’ experience you're primarily focusing on, soaking through engaging podcasts may involve tiny mindshare tradeoffs.
Melting away and freezing up
I have a theory that there are two types of mobile users: the checkers and the perusers. Checkers are constantly picking up their phone to quickly check their notifications. They leave it out on the dinner table, face-up, to instantly see if it lights up. Perusers are the ones who use their phone for longer periods of time to fend off boredom. Five minutes in line at the grocery store, fifteen minutes checking Twitter at lunch.
The physical state of consumer products are not permanent, but flux indeed. For example, Instagram Stories are more like a ‘granitas’ experience, that more often than not turns into a 20-30’ minute popsicle. Interstices between lumps of solid matter are catalysts for the emergence of new popsicles. It happens to me every so often to get sucked into a YouTube rabbit hole. Our attention tank is unfortunately bounded, and context switching drains much more fuel than uninterrupted focus time.
Finally, at the risk of extending the metaphor too long, sometimes water (like audiobooks & podcasts) tends to freeze into a sorbet-like texture, more like a viscous liquid. For me, those are news, business, and tech-related podcasts. In this case, the audio experience almost turns into a popsicle that can compete for mindshare with others of different flavors. Engaging audio content pairs well with ‘half-melted popsicles’, such as commuting or running home chores. Headspace is the ultimate ‘audio popsicle’ for me, as I literally do nothing else when meditating.
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