Hyperlinks are like cashew nuts

15 Nov 2024

Shreyas Prakash headshot

Shreyas Prakash

Take a small block of paragraph and sprinkle 8-10 hyperlinks in it—

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec tristique elit sit amet diam fringilla posuere sodales a leo. Cras auctor efficitur purus in suscipit. Sed ornare lectus at nisl dictum semper. Donec efficitur lorem in nisi dapibus condimentum. Ut ex tortor, aliquam at facilisis vitae, porttitor maximus sapien. Duis non nibh sodales, vehicula nisl vitae****, tempor nibh. Praesent nibh odio****, tempor at rhoncus in, blandit id ipsum.

Just like cashew nuts in an Indian gravy, if you add too much of it, it loses it’s uniqueness. When you’re eating, you want the crunchiness of the cashews to come sometimes, not all the time. So you add less cashew nuts. To make it look like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec tristique elit sit amet diam fringilla sodales a leo. Sed ornare lectus at nisl dictum semper. Donec Ut ex tortor, aliquam at facilisis vitae, porttitor maximus sapien. Duis non nibh, tempor nibh. Praesent nibh odio, tempor at rhoncus in, blandit id ipsum.

If you’re wondering what I have to do with cashew nuts in a curry, or hyperlinks in an essay, you would be surprised how much this lesson holds true for so many things in life.

Keep meeting a friend everyday, and they feel “drained” to meet you. But you meet them rarely, and they forget that you exist.

Keep posting reels everyday on Instagram, or put some pithy quotes on Linkedin, and you’re all of a sudden an influencer/pundit, and less of a friend that you might know and would want to follow. Don’t post anything at all, and you don’t exist.

Everything in a way, is like adding cashew nuts to a curry.

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