Scaling Up Kindness

Scaling up is a very common problem when it comes to internet services. Everything is flexible these days, everything can grow along your product or service. Things can be scaled up at the press of a button. More power, more memory, more bandwidth. The entire ecosystem is designed to support growth.

Because there's only one thing you can do when it comes to online products: grow.

But how do you scale up something that's not meant to be scaled? How do you scale up kindness? How do you scale up something like taking your time to know a person and interact with them over weeks and months?

The answer to that question to me is obvious: you don't.

Some things can't scale. Some things are not "designed" to be scaled. They're probably not even meant to be scaled. Scarcity is a quality of certain things and it's what makes them special.

You can't scale up good friendships. You can't scale up the work of a craftsman. No matter how much technology you throw into the mix, some problems are unsolvable.

At a certain scale the only right answer is to stop growing. You enjoy what you have, you appreciate what's there. And you take your time. You don't scale up. You slow down.