Recently, I listened to an episode of the Lex Fridman podcast with Pavel Durov (the founder of Telegram) as his guest.

He practices self-discipline in empowering ways. From intermittent fasting and eating only within a six-hour window while avoiding sugars, to doing 300 push-ups, pull-ups, and squats per day, and completing multi-hour swims across lakes (including Lake Geneva & Lake Zurich), Pavel appears to be at the helm and steering his ship. This is evident from the success of Telegram and the company's commitment to defending users' rights and privacy from world powers who aim to undermine them and promote censorship.

In particular, I was inspired by how deliberate Pavel is with his focus and attention. In the following excerpt, Pavel explains how intentional he is with the information he consumes and how important it is to protect your mind from influences who don’t particularly have your best interest in mind.

Excerpt

https://youtu.be/qjPH9njnaVU?t=714

Lex: And perhaps, I think you said you want to achieve mastery at a niche, so find a niche at which you can pursue with all your effort and achieve mastery, and the niche being different than anything that anybody else is doing. Can you explain that a little bit more?

Pavel: So, obviously, in order to contribute to the society you're in, to the economy of the country you live in, you have to do something that is valuable. But if you're doing something that everybody else is doing anyway, what's the value of it? Now, it sounds easier than it is done to do something that nobody else is doing, because we humans are surrounded by all kinds of information which makes us want to copy what we are perceiving. At the same time, there are so many areas which you can explore that have nothing to do with the information you receive on the daily basis. So, it's extremely important to curate the information sources that you have, so that you wouldn't be somebody who is left to the will of AI-based algorithmic feed telling you what's important, so that you end up consuming the same information, the same stuff, the same memes, the same news as everybody else. But rather, you should be proactive. You should deliberately try to set a goal an area that you want to explore, and then actively search information that is relevant to this field, so that one day, you can become the world's number one expert in this field. And it's not quite... it's not that difficult to do that. You have to just remain consistent, because nobody else is trying to do that. Everybody else is just reading the same news and discussing the same news every day. But this way, they don't get to have a competitive advantage.

Lex: Yeah. The majority of the population become slaves to the AI recommender systems, AI-driven recommender systems, and so the content everybody's fed is the same thing, and we all become the same. On that point, one of the different things you do is you don't use a phone, except occasionally to test Telegram features. But I've been with you for two weeks. I haven't seen you use a phone at all in the way that most people use a phone, like, for their social media. So, can you describe your philosophy behind that?

Pavel: I don't think a phone is a necessary device. I remember growing up, I didn't have a mobile phone. When I was a student at the university, I didn't have a mobile phone. When I finally got to use a mobile phone, I never used phone calls. I was always in airplane mode or mute. I hated the idea of being disturbed. My philosophy here is pretty simple. I want to define what is important in my life. I don't want other people or companies, all kinds of organizations telling me what is important today and what I should be thinking about. Just set up your own agenda, and the phone gets in your way.

Lex: It provides distractions. It guides what you should be looking at, what you will be looking at, so you don't want that. You want to quiet the mind. You want to choose what kind of stuff you let inside your mind.

Pavel: Yes, because this way I can contribute to the progress of society, or at least I like to think this way, and this makes me happier.

This conversation inspired me to start being more deliberate about what can access my mind. I spend a lot of time on X (formerly known as Twitter), where I’ve curated an inspirational timeline of all my passions including builders/founders/technologists, designs, and so forth. However, the platform also includes a lot of information to hijack your attention including sections such as ‘Today’s News’, and ‘What’s Happening’. These sections include global events, politics, celebrity news, and so forth; information which I wouldn’t usually seek on my own but is being forced upon me. The mind is very susceptible and vulnerable, and it’s very easy for you to lose focus and attention. I could want to go for a five-minute break on X/Twitter to gain some design inspiration and instead fall down the rabbit hole of Taylor Swift drama, what Trump did this week, etc.

So, I decided to create an element blocker tool for my browser called Pavel. This tool allows me to select any element on the page that I don’t want to see, and remove it! This helps me curate my own unique experience on any website and avoid my mind being hijacked.

X/Twitter by default: