Welcome to a new Lateral Thinking edition. No long-intro, just a short request:

I’d like to ask you all to test out a Lateral Thinking clone I built - it’s based on all the information from 200+ Lateral Thinking articles I wrote and it’s supposed to be a “AI clone” of my lateral self.

What you should use it for: ask it about lateral solutions to your business, marketing & life problems. I’ve been testing it for a while and I can confidently say I would do what it says 75% of the time, which is not bad.

Once you’ve tested it, let me know your thoughts through this poll:

And if you want to share your thoughts on how it could be better, just reply to this email.

That’s it, let’s jump into today’s puzzle:

An answer, as usual, at the end of this newsletter.

Also, if you got this email from a friend, don’t forget to:

Time to talk about your choices.

Time to talk about the real enemy of progress today. It’s not a lack of opportunity.

It’s the absolute tsunami of it, especially now that AI has thrown open every single door in the building.

You look around, and it feels like everyone’s sprinting past you, building their empire with some new AI wrapper, and you’re still standing there, paralyzed, wondering if you’ve already missed the boat.

We’re drowning in options. You’ve got an idea for a business? Great, AI tools mean you can build it yourself for pennies. Want to learn a new skill? There are 50 courses, 20 mentors, and a dozen AI assistants ready to “optimize” your learning path.

The science has always been clear: give people too many choices, and they perform worse. They get stuck. They postpone. They end up doing nothing at all, which is, ironically, the easiest choice.

Here’s the contrarian take, the thing that actually works: You don’t need to find the best choice. You need to eliminate the bad ones, then eliminate some more, until you barely have any left.

Think of it like this: If you’re trying to decide what to build, don’t brainstorm ten amazing ideas. Pick three. Then, here’s the critical part, force yourself to eliminate one. Not the worst one, necessarily, but just one. Now you’re down to two. Two options. Not three, not five. Just two.

I had the same problem with this newsletter.

I’m usually sharp enough to find at least a half a dozen good ideas of how to build on something. Which was the problem. Analysis paralysis. I had hundreds of ideas for this thing, genuinely good ideas too: new formats, wild content angles, sneaky AI integrations. Too many good options. And that, frankly, is the problem.

This is why I’m taking my own advice and taking this newsletter more seriously - or dropping it completely.

This isn’t about limiting your potential. It’s about focusing your scarce resource: attention. In an AI-augmented world where capital is cheap and tools are abundant, attention is the real bottleneck. Your attention, and your customer’s attention. Niche down. Specialize. If you’re building an AI tool, don’t make it for “everyone.” Make it for two very specific types of people. If you’re learning, pick two skills, not a broad field. Master those two.

Everyone’s screaming “more, more, more”. The secret weapon is “less.” Cut the noise. Take away a choice. You’ll move faster than ever before.

Answer: the man passed a kidney stone.