The Illusion of Unlimitedness

Over a period of time, I have started to realize that unlimitedness is an illusion. It doesn’t bring any good. You don’t get very far with anything that you got without limits.

When I started programming at the age of 14, I didn’t have internet, I just had a small handbook of C which my brother had got from his institute and a computer without C compiler. All I did was imagining what programs I can write if I get the compiler. That made me think more about programming and more prepared for the time when I’m going to sit in front of a computer in my school’s computer lab and make the best out of that very little time. It is the process or journey towards achieving something that makes it valuable, not instantly having it.

I bought a Netflix subscription recently thinking I’ll use it when I feel bored. It gives me almost unlimited content. But when I get free time, I go in there, choose a movie to watch (after a long thought process) and 10 minutes into the movie, I start to feel, “maybe the other movie could be a better one”. I jump there, 10 minutes, I end up feeling I wanted more, that ‘more’ exists somewhere in that unlimited Netflix list, where my finite time is trying to find it and it’s lost in the process. Believe me, I have seen far more movies when I didn’t have access to these unlimited movies.

Growing up when there was very slow, limited internet, it was great. I had limited resources, so I would focus on when I browse, I download stuff I need, and then I disconnect and do the stuff that I’ll do. Most of the projects that I’m proud of writing were from that period. All I had was a JDK, NetBeans installed and I would browse through source code to understand APIs available in Java SDK. No internet, no unlimited packages and package managers, still I felt faster in implementing stuff.

And once unlimited internet came, I browsed more than I built. I got access to unlimited books in pdf (most of them pirated). It felt great at first but then quickly I realized, only when I have unlimited access to pdf books, I read nothing. Then I had to force myself not to read anything without going through the process of thinking about the book, wanting it and finally buying it. I bought fewer books, read even fewer but I did read something which I didn’t do with the unlimitedness.

Now when we are living in a world wanting access to unlimited tokens, I’m thinking about all these limitations I had by having unlimited of them. When something is scarce, it’s precious, it gets its value from being finite. Natural resources, physical space, time - all these are perennially valuable because they are finite. So I’m just reminding myself that just unlimited tokens are not going to help me build my next big thing, it’s my perseverance with limited resources that always had brought success. How I’m going to efficiently use the little token budget I have is my new quest to learn in this journey.