Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet, shared three “simple filters” that helped him get ‘more moments right than wrong and took some of the pressure off’ his own life, while delivering a speech at Stanford’s 135th Commencement earlier this year.He told the Class of 2026 that very few moments in life are make-or-break, full of big predictions about technology, but with innovation, hard work, the choice of conversation that keeps one chatting late with roommates is what gets you going.Going further, he took to real-life anecdotes from his early life back in Chennai, where he grew up waiting years for a telephone, a TV, and a refrigerator, and about his father spending a year’s salary on his plane ticket to Stanford.All of it felt more like advice from a friend than a lecture. Let’s look at each of the three filters that helped him keep going
Filter 1: Choose optimism
Pichai’s first filter is to choose optimism. He said, “It’s easy to look at the news of the day and think that we’re living in uniquely challenging times. For me, it’s helpful to remember that each generation has faced hardship in their own way. We don’t get to choose the world we graduate into, but we do get to choose how we frame our circumstances.”He recalled his first drive in California, when he called the hills brown and his host, Mrs. Jane Earl, gently called them golden. That small change in perspective influenced how he saw everything further. It also helped when he left his PhD plans at Stanford and finished a master’s instead, which he chose to see as ‘golden’.
Filter 2: Work on hard things
The second filter is to gravitate toward hard things. It took him time to find his footing. He said, “Working on hard things has taught me a lot: It typically attracts other great and optimistic people. And even if you miss meeting the high goals you set, you’ll still achieve something great.So when you have the choice to work on something hard, say yes”.Pichai explained that during his early days at Google, a team of about ten set out to build a browser, a job many thought needed hundreds of engineers. Chrome launched in 2008 with eight million users in its first 24 hours, then growth stalled, and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer called it a rounding error. Pichai told the team that meant they were doing something right, and they kept shipping every six weeks, unlike others who did the same in “maybe every six months to a year. Success began to follow”.
Filter 3: Do what excites you
The third filter is what Pichai says, ‘when all else is equal, do what excites you’. For Pichai, that has always meant access to technology. He grew up waiting years for a phone, a TV and a fridge, and only got easy computer access at Stanford, where he saw rows of computers in Sweet Hall in 1993. That excitement led him to Google, Chromebooks and Android. He then told graduates to ignore what parents, friends or society expect, and ‘think about the things that keep you chatting excitedly with your roommates late into the night. And go do those things.’
