Founders - #191 Naval Ravikant (A Guide to Wealth and Happiness)

Starting point is 00:00:00 I grew up in a single-parent household, with my mom working, going to school, and raising my brother and me as latchkey kids. We were very self-sufficient from a very early age. There was a lot of hardship, but everyone goes through hardship. It did help me in a number of ways. We were poor immigrants. My family split up. My mother uniquely provided, against the background of hardship, unconditional and unfailing love. If you have nothing in your life, but you have at least one person that loves you unconditionally, it'll do wonders for your self-esteem. The library was my after-school center.

Starting point is 00:00:38 After school, I would go straight to the library and hang out until they closed. I spent a lot of time reading. My only real friends were books. Books make for great friends because the best thinkers of the last few thousand years tell you their nuggets of wisdom. My first job was with an illegal catering company in the back of a van delivering Indian food when I was 15.

Starting point is 00:01:01 When I was younger, I had a paper route and I washed dishes in the cafeteria. I was a totally unknown kid in New York City from a nothing family, an immigrants trying to survive situation. Then I passed the test to get into Stuyvesant High School. That saved my life because once I had the Stuyvesant brand, I got into an Ivy League college, which led me into tech. Stuyvesant is one of those intelligence lottery situations where you can break in with instant validation. I studied economics and computer science. I thought I was going to be a PhD in economics.

Starting point is 00:01:38 Today, I'm an investor, in addition to being the founder and chairman of AngelList. I was born poor and miserable. I am now pretty well off and I'm very happy. I worked at those. I learned a few things and some principles. I try to lay them out in a timeless manner where you can figure it out for yourself because at the end of the day, I can't quite teach anything. I can only inspire you and maybe give you a few hooks so you can remember. That was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is the Almanac of Naval Ravikant. Mostly in Naval's words, it was put together by Eric Jorgensen, and there is a foreword written by Tim Ferriss. Okay, so as you know, normally for this podcast, I read biographies.

Starting point is 00:02:24 This book isn't technically a biography, although we did get a brief bio of Naval. So normally a book like this would be a bonus episode. I am going to number this because I think I've done out of what? We're almost at 200 episodes. I think I have 10 bonus episodes and they're not numbered. So it's really hard to reference back to them. So I'm going to number this one. So it's easy to reference in the future.

Starting point is 00:02:42 And the reason that I wanted to read this book is because, well, two reasons. One, I mean, you could say, I'm just going to list some of the people that I feel applied that idea. Find work that feels like play. It's very, very hard to compete with somebody. If what you're doing feels like work to you and it feels like play to them, you could say Henry Ford had that. Thomas Edison. David Ogilvie definitely had it.

Starting point is 00:03:23 Joe Colombe, the guy that founded Trader Joe's. Albert Einstein. Phil Knight. Both Cesar Ritz and August Escoffier. The list goes on and on and on. Warren Buffett is a great example of that. It's just a really, really powerful idea that I see over and over again in these books that I'm reading for this project. So I want to bring this to your attention.

Starting point is 00:03:43 There's a ton of great ideas in this book. They're very clear-cut. Naval, very much like, think about the almanac of Naval Ravikant. Where does that name come from? It comes from poor Richard's almanac, Benjamin Franklin, which then inspired the poor Charlie's almanac. Benjamin Franklin, Naval Ravikant, Charlie Munger all speak in maxims and aphorisms. So it makes their ideas very easy to remember and constantly. They almost turn it's an easy way to turn like an idea into a tool that you can constantly reference. So let me go to the beginning of the book. We have Eric Jorgensen who put this project together. Oh, I should say this. I'm working out of the paperback version, but I'll leave a link in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:04:22 You can read the book online for free. And this is a project that just did it as a public service. They're not doing it to try to make money. So this is important notes on the book. At the very beginning, it talks about the unique structure of the book. So it says, I built the Naval Almanac entirely out of transcripts, tweets, and talks that Naval has shared. Every attempt is made to present Naval in his own words. There are a few important points. I just want to pull out two right here because I think it applies to more than just this book. Concepts and interpretations change over time, medium, and context. Please interpret generously. By definition, everything in this book is taken

Starting point is 00:05:01 out of context. Interpretations will change over time. Read and interpret generously. Understand the original intent may be different than your interpretation. So that's what I mean. It applies much more to than just this book. And then a lot of the book comes from, like you said, there's interviews, there's podcasts, and it's almost like edited transcripts. We saw very similar. There's a very similar project put together by Walter Isaacson. It was, I think, Founders No. 155, Invent and Wonder the Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos. I covered that on episode 155. The first half of that book is all of Jeff Bezos' shareholder letters. But the second half is some of his best talks in edited transcripts, which I think is really fascinating and really fun to read. So what Eric did here, which I think is a really interesting decision,

Starting point is 00:05:47 he says there's a bunch of bolded questions in the book. So you have some interviewer asking the ball question, and you see an edited version of his answer. And so he says, Many excerpts are from interviews by fantastic creators like Shane Parrish, Sarah Lacey, Joe Rogan, and Tim Ferriss. The questions are bolded. For simplicity and

Starting point is 00:06:06 continuity, I do not distinguish various interviewers from each other. It's just using a question by an interviewer as a prompt to get to the Naval's answer. Okay, so let's go to the forward. This is a forward written by Tim Ferriss. And this is really wild too, because I've read Tim Ferriss' For Our Work Week, I don't know, like, I discovered it on MySpace. That's how long ago it was. So I don't know, 15 years ago, maybe even longer than that. And I've listened to his podcast. And what's really wild is he's included, he's linked to founders multiple times in his newsletter, which is amazing, because a lot of listeners found this podcast that way and they

Starting point is 00:06:46 turned into subscribers so it's it's really wild considering how much i followed his work but this is what he's talking about so he's writing this forward he starts off saying hey listen i i don't write forwards i get asked this so much like i just can't do this but navall is one of his favorite people so i'm just going to pull a couple highlights here for you um he's describing navall and what he likes about. He is rarely part of any consensus. And the uniqueness of his life, lifestyle, family dynamics, and startup success is a reflection of conscious choices that he made to do things differently. So I think of reading a biography as downloading somebody's life philosophy. And when you do that, you can take the parts that you like

Starting point is 00:07:26 and combine it with other parts to create something completely unique, and then you have your own philosophy. And that's really why I wanted to read this book. I've followed Naval forever. I've seen him speak in person. I've listened to him on podcasts. He just has a lot of interesting ideas that I think you just grab, and then you can apply them to whatever you're doing. Back to Tim. Tim says, I take Naval seriously because he, and he has a list,

Starting point is 00:07:50 so I'm just going to read them off. Questions nearly everything. Can think from first principles. Tests things well. Is good at not fooling himself. Changes his mind regularly, laughs a lot, thinks holistically, thinks long term, and doesn't take himself too goddamn seriously. That last one is important. Naval has changed my life for the better. And if you approach the following pages like a friendly but highly competent sparring partner, he might just change yours. I love that idea. Let me read that again. I like the idea of reading a book and thinking of them as like an intellectual sparring partner. Naval has changed my life for the better. And if you approach the following pages like a friendly,

Starting point is 00:08:32 but highly competent sparring partner, he might just change yours. Okay, so let's get into the book. The book starts with Naval might have might be the most widespread tweet storm on Twitter. I have no idea. But it's called How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky. I'm going to read the entire tweet storm, but he has different sections of the book. And again, the book is non-narrative. It's meant to be picked up and read. You don't have to read in order if you don't want to. But I think starting with the wealth section, how to build wealth is probably the best part.

Starting point is 00:09:02 It's also the first part. So it starts out, understand how wealth is created. This is before I get to the tweet storm. Okay. And again, these are all Naval's words. It's not really about hard work. You can work in a restaurant 80 hours a week and you're not going to get rich. Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with and when to do it. It is much more about understanding than purely hard work. Yes, hard work matters and you can't skimp on it, but it has to be directed in the right way. So he's not saying just sit on your ass, be lazy. He's like, find out what to do, the right thing to do first. And that's what this is. This book is just so important, especially these ideas about finding what you are uniquely

Starting point is 00:09:41 qualified to do, what service you can provide the world that only can come from you. That is such a powerful idea in an age of infinite leverage. We're going to talk a shit ton about that today. So yes, hard work matters, but you can't skimp on it, but it has to be directed in the right way. So you find out what you do first. I don't, if you don't, I just ran over his point here. If you don't know yet what you should work on,

Starting point is 00:10:01 the most important thing is to figure it out. So it's been a lot of people that have influenced my thinking in this that it might be helpful for you. One of that is obviously Naval, but Paul Graham has great essays on that. And I recommend reading all of Paul Graham's essays. They're available at paulgram.com. But if you only have time to read one that pertains to this topic, it was written, I think, 15 years ago, a long time ago. I read it. It heavily influenced me. It's called How to Do What You Love. And there's a lot of overlap between what Paul Graham learned from his career that Naval learned from his.

Starting point is 00:10:36 I think it's just it's a fantastic, fantastic essay. Let me go back to this. This is exactly what I did my famous tweetstorm about. Every one of these tweets can be extrapolated into an hour's worth of conversation. Okay, so I'm going to read this starting first one, how to get rich without getting lucky. Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy. So you're seeking wealth, not money or status. Understand ethical wealth creation is possible.

Starting point is 00:11:11 If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you. Ignore people playing status games. That's such a valuable sentence. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games. You are not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity, a piece of a business to gain your financial freedom. And a lot of what we're going to see in this tweet storm is repeated and expounded on in this book. Naval knows just like Jeff Bezos, just like Elon Musk, just like Bill Walsh, all these books that we're reading, the best founders develop a philosophy

Starting point is 00:11:42 and then they repeat it for decades. Because a big part about building a company is convincing other people to adapt your mission. And the way you do that is by teaching them what's important to you. So I love the fact that and again, the way to think about that is what you and I have talked about over and over again. Repetition, repetition is persuasive. Repetition is persuasive. You've got to be prepared to repeat yourself for a very, very long time. You will get rich by giving society what it wants, but does not yet know how to get at scale. Pick an industry where you can play long term games with long term people. And this is one of my favorite tweets out of this entire tweet storm I think about all the time. The Internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven't figured this out yet. Play iterated games, all the returns in life, whether, and this is such

Starting point is 00:12:33 an important point, we've seen this with Buffett and Munger and others, Singleton, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, all returns in life come from compound interest. Pick business partners with high intelligence, energy, and above all, integrity. Don't partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self-fulfilling. Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable. Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage,

Starting point is 00:13:00 which is talked about over and over again in this book, so we'll go into a lot of that today. Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you. Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity. I underlined that twice, your genuine curiosity part. Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. Building and why is that important? Because whatever your life's work, the people that you're going to most admire, they work on the same thing for a very, very long time. Think about Steve Jobs. Even when he left

Starting point is 00:13:34 Apple, he worked on essentially the same thing for multiple decades. Time is the best teacher. He's going to derive insights that the person that jumps around and works on a new project every three, four, five years is just never going to get to. Build specific. This is such a fantastic another tweet. Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you, but will look like work to others. And Naval quotes Buffett a lot in the book. And I just want to give you an example of why that's that one tweet is so important. It's just almost impossible to compete with somebody that is playing while you're working. And so Buffett was asking somebody, or excuse me,

Starting point is 00:14:09 I think he was giving a talk at a college. I think it was college-age kids. I'm almost positive about that. But they're like, hey, if I'm just starting out my career, what do you recommend, like the best route to take so I can do what you did? I want to be a successful investor in his case. And so he pointed to a stack of, it was just like company reports. And he said,

Starting point is 00:14:30 read 500 pages of that every day and do that over a long period. I'm paraphrasing here. He says, read 500 pages a day and do that over a long period of time. Knowledge compounds just like money does. Right. And so his point was like most people that that's very, it's simple, but not easy. Right. But most people just will not. They absolutely will not do that. They want when they're asking that question, they want some shortcut. I think Charlie Munger says, hey, when he gets questions like that, it's like, hey, how do I get rich like, Founders No. 182, Buffett, The Making of American Capitalists. It talks about in there, like a friend of Buffett's. It's just like for Buffett reading a bunch of company reports or reading a bunch of books is like a night out on the town. He does that for fun. And he's one of the lucky ones that found what he loved to do at a very early age and is doing it for 60, 70 years. It's almost impossible to compete with him.

Starting point is 00:15:21 So we just read that again. Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you, but will look like work to others. And later on in the book, Naval has great illustrations of these ideas truncated into like an entire paragraph. And Buffett is one of the great illustrations. So I'll get there. When specific knowledge is taught, it's through apprenticeships, not schools. Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It can't, and this is so important in today's age, it cannot be outsourced or automated. Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage. And for that tweet, I don't think I found it in the book. At least I don't remember reading it,

Starting point is 00:15:59 but he uses examples of people that do that. They embrace accountability. It's obviously, you get the upside. There is some downside with that. So he uses the example of people that do that. They embrace accountability. It's obviously you get the upside. There is some downside with that. So he uses the example of people like Elon Musk, Oprah, Joe Rogan. They're taking massive risks under their own name. He quotes Archimedes here. Give me a lover long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth. So big, big part of this book and of all thinking is the fact that let's go back to the idea. Let me go back to this one page. Hold on. Go back to the page. The internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven't figured that out yet. Combine

Starting point is 00:16:33 that idea with the fact that the internet also provides infinite, infinite leverage. I guess I'm running over the point here. His point, the next tweet, fortune requires leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people and products with no marginal cost of replication. And he puts in parentheses code and media go into that category. Capital means money. To raise money, apply your specific knowledge with accountability and show resulting good judgment. Labor means people working for you. It is the oldest and most fought over form of leverage. And I think the one that he personally dislikes the most. Labor leverage will impress your parents, but don't waste your life chasing it. Capital and labor are permissioned leverage.

Starting point is 00:17:18 Everyone is chasing capital, but someone has to give it to you. Everyone is trying to lead, but someone has to follow you. And this is where he ties into this. We're in a very unique time in history, right? Code and media are permissionless leverage. They're the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep. An army of robots is freely available. It is packed in data centers for heat and space efficiency. Use it. If you can't code, then write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts. Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgment. Judgment requires experience, but can be built faster by learning foundational skills. That's something, another thing that Naval repeats over and over again, that you need,

Starting point is 00:18:03 instead of getting all fancy, master the basics, master the fundamentals. And that's something, again, I have, so I'm developing some unique, unique set of knowledge in the sense that there's very few people that are going to read hundreds of biographies, right? And all I can tell you is like from spending multiple years, tens of close to a hundred reading a hundred thousand pages or whatever the number is so far, the far, the people that are masters at their craft, almost universally, they aim for simplicity. And I think what Naval is saying here, it requires experience, but it can be built faster by learning foundational skills. You're better off mastering the basics than trying to get all complicated. There's no skill called

Starting point is 00:18:43 business. Avoid business magazines and business classes. I would add business books to that. Again, I got the entire idea. The first idea to do this podcast is I was, a long time ago, Kevin Rose, the founder of Dig, had this series called Foundation. He's interviewing Elon Musk. I think this was back in 2012.

Starting point is 00:19:00 And he asked Elon, he's like, Elon, like you come to, you went from South Africa to Canada and you wind up in California, starting companies when you're early twenties. Like, how did you figure out how to do this? Did you read a bunch of business books? Did you have a bunch of mentors? And he's like, no, I didn't read business books. I looked for mentors in historical context, which means books. He's like, I just read a lot of biographies, basically. I found those helpful. And I was like, well, if Elon thinks they're helpful, like, why am I not reading more biographies, right?

Starting point is 00:19:26 And then the more you read biographies, you read all the people that live their lives that are so remarkable that people, somebody actually wrote a biography about, read biographies. It's like this ongoing cycle. It's like, oh, clearly some of the smartest, most talented people that have ever existed

Starting point is 00:19:39 found this activity to be high value. Maybe I should do that. It's not rocket science, right? Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers. Reading is faster than listening. Doing is faster than watching. You should be too busy to do coffee while keeping an uncluttered calendar. Set and embrace an aspirational personal hourly rate.

Starting point is 00:20:03 If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it. Let me read that again. Okay. So if fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, then you ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it. So something I'm always kind of inspired by is the fact that intelligence can manifest itself in all kinds of bizarre ways. And you can learn from almost everybody. And so there's like this young kid, and I don't mean that in a pejorative by any means. His name is Mr. Beast. I was listening to an interview with Casey Neistat, which is one of my favorite YouTubers. And I just think it's the films he made when he was doing his daily vlogs are just

Starting point is 00:20:49 masterpieces for like 10 minute videos. It's amazing. He was able to do every day. And I think he said he did every day for like 800 days or it was an insane amount of work, but he said something and he knows the YouTube space way more than I do. And he said the greatest YouTuber, the most successful YouTuber that ever lived is Mr. Beast. And so I listened to an interview with Mr. Beast. I think he's 21, 22 years old at the time. And he's been trying to succeed on YouTube for over a decade. But anyways, he talked about he's like, listen, my channel is going crazy. He literally just does YouTube. He's like, I don't think about what I'm going to eat. I don't this shirt I'm wearing. I didn't buy it. Somebody else bought it for me. He's like, I outsourced every other

Starting point is 00:21:28 thing in my life because right now the single and this is a lot of wisdom for such a young guy. Right. The single most valuable thing I could be doing is thinking about making better videos and dedicating all my time to that. You know, who knows if, you know, 15 years from now, 20 years from now, people are still going to be watching my videos and the numbers and the impact it can have now. So I cannot, I literally, he's essentially plying Naval's idea here. If outsourcing a task will cost less

Starting point is 00:21:54 than your hourly rate, outsource it. He just chooses to outsource everything. Going back to this, work as hard as you can, even though who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work. Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true. And again, the age of infinite leverage, the internet, that's more possible than ever. I don't know if that idea would have worked a couple hundred years ago. There are no get rich quick

Starting point is 00:22:21 schemes. Those are just someone else trying to get rich off of you. Apply specific knowledge with leverage and eventually you will get what you deserve. And he wraps up his tweet here. When you when you're finally wealthy, you'll realize it wasn't what you were seeking in the first place. But that is for another day. And so now they take the tweet storm and they add to this book is I've been thinking about this lately because there's a few books that I again, like sometimes I have to slog through these books to get them done. But there's a lot of books where it's just like there's just so fun to read.

Starting point is 00:22:55 I'm thinking of unpublished the unpublished David Ogilvie. I thought about that when I when I finished is like, how can, how can there be more books that are produced? And it helped because earlier that week, I tried to read, there's a book on J.R. Simplot, who became a billionaire. He was selling potatoes. He wound up being, I think, McDonald's main supplier for potatoes. But I read, I got through half the book and I was like, I hate this book. I can't do a podcast on it. And so I wound up reading, I don't know, 150 pages. And so I had this huge contrast between an author that was making the reader's job so much harder

Starting point is 00:23:31 and not writing a book to be read versus an unpublished David Ogilvie, which I had a hard time putting down. I think of Ritz and Scafier. That book was like this huge adventure. And you're studying the greatest hotelier of all time who happened to just happen to partner with the greatest chef of all time. And it's giving you a history of like what it was like to be in Paris around 1900s. It was just super, super exciting. It's like this book is written for fun. And if you're having fun, you're going to learn a lot faster. And so this book that I'm holding my hand, it's written to be read, to have fun reading. And I just think there's a lot to be learned from like the structure of books or the way that we can improve the structure of books.

Starting point is 00:24:10 So more people would read. But anyways, that's a weird tangent. Let me go to the summary of the, they summarize this tweet storm summary, productize yourself. So then what Eric did here, which was really smart, he interjects somebody asking Naval a question about what does that mean? Your summary says productize yourself. What does that mean? And this is where Naval has a real gift of compact knowledge. Yourself, and he just takes, there's two words in there. So let me define those two words. Yourself has uniqueness. Product ties has leverage. And later on in his answer, he wraps up. He says, this is hard. This is why I say it takes decades. I'm not saying it takes decades to execute, but the better part of a decade may be figuring out what you can uniquely provide. That's another

Starting point is 00:24:58 double underline for me. You can uniquely provide. You think about you don't want to build a commoditized product, right? You want to capture the value and to escape competition. You escape competition through authenticity. You need a non-commoditized product. And you're able to do that by building a monopoly of one. And once you do that, then you find scale. But you got to fit. That's why I think it's very difficult. Find what you can uniquely provide and then scale it. Don't worry about scaling until you find that out. And he gives examples of like more traditional, like Steve Jobs and Apple in a minute. Technology democratizes consumption, but consolidates production. The best person in the world at anything gets to do it for

Starting point is 00:25:33 everyone. If you want to be wealthy, you want to figure out which one of these things you can provide for society that it does not know how to get, but it will want and providing it is natural to you within your skill set and within your capabilities. Then you have to figure out how to scale it. Steve Jobs and his team figured out society would want smartphones. So they figured out how to build it first, and then they figured out how to scale it. And then he goes into this idea of what he referenced on specific knowledge. Specific knowledge cannot be taught, but it can be learned. When I talk about specific knowledge, I mean, figure out what you were doing as a kid or as a teenager, almost effortlessly. Something you didn't even consider a skill,

Starting point is 00:26:14 but people around you noticed. Your mother or your best friend growing up would know. The specific knowledge is sort of this weird combination of unique traits. It's almost baked into your personality and your identity, and then you can hone it. So they're looking for specific knowledge that comes easy to you, but will provide value to others. This is his point. No one, and why?

Starting point is 00:26:33 No one can compete with you on being you. Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most. Another note I left myself on a few pages later, you can't compete with someone who is playing. Again, I know I'm repeating that, but that's intentional. Specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion. It is not by going to school for whatever is the hottest job. It's not by going into whatever field investors say is the hottest because trends change,

Starting point is 00:27:01 but you want to find something you can do for a long period of time because all the good things in life come from compounding. We're adding one novel idea after another, right? If you're not 100% into it, somebody else... I love that he says this. If you're not 100% into it, somebody else who is 100% into it will outperform you. And they won't. And again, why is that important? Because in the age of infinite leverage, you have these wide variants of results and they won't just outperform you by a little bit. They'll outperform you by a lot because now we're operating the domain of ideas. But because now we're operating the domain of ideas, compound interest really applies and leverage really applies. So he's hounding on the saying, find what you need to, what you need to, find what you need to. Do not copy. Just copy what other people are doing.

Starting point is 00:27:50 And he's going to expand on that. And I'll tell you how this relates to some other stuff we just learned. Escape competition through authenticity. Basically, when you're competing with people, it's because you're copying them. It's because you're trying to do the same thing. So if you're doing that, that means you haven't found something that's unique to you. And what I would say to myself on this page is don't copy the what,

Starting point is 00:28:11 copy the how. And we saw this over and over again. What blew my mind in that bonus episode I was doing for Working Backwards, which was written by a guy that shadowed Jeff Bezos for two years. And he talks about they were trying to expand amazon's product category at the time they were just selling books music and dvds uh and they go to meet with steve jobs there's a hilarious story in that book steve jobs just starts the meeting he's like okay uh apple just built its first windows application it's the best windows application ever anybody ever built

Starting point is 00:28:41 but anyways he's saying hey you know what uh you're selling cds it's a large part of your business itunes a combination of itunes and ipod which is what he was showing jeff uh is gonna you know you're gonna essentially you're gonna be selling antiques soon and so uh there's a lot of people pressuring other businesses such as amazon to jump in and make another mp3 player start selling other digital forms of music and jeff's like i'm not doing that because i'm not gonna out compete apple by being i can't out apple apple right but what he did he didn't copy the what he copied the how and it blew my freaking mind i never put this together and i had the very first i've had kindles forever right and what i realized is that jeff bezos took steve jobs and apple's ideas for the digitization of music and with using the combination of iTunes

Starting point is 00:29:26 and the iPod and applied them to the digitization of reading with the Kindle. And it says that explicitly in that book. And I never made the connection of my own. It's fantastic. So again, think about reducing that idea. Don't copy the what copy the how going back to this. If you're fundamentally building and marketing something that is an extension of who you are, no one can compete with you on that. The best jobs are neither. Now this is moving on to a different section. It just happens to be on the next page. The best jobs are neither decreed nor degreed. They are creative expressions of continuous learners in free markets. That is amazing sentence right there. They are creative expressions of continuous learners in free markets. The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner.

Starting point is 00:30:12 Okay, so now moving ahead, we got another section on build or buy equity in a business. And really what I love that he does here, he's going to describe why this concept is so important by describing its opposite. Very smart. If you don't own a piece of a business, you don't have a path towards financial freedom. Without ownership, your inputs are very closely tied to your outputs. In almost any salary job, even one paying a lot per hour, like a lawyer or doctor, you're still putting in the hours. And every hour you get paid. Without ownership, when you're sleeping, you're not earning. See how he's describing the opposite. When you're retired, you're not earning see how he's describing the opposite when you're retired you're not earning when you're with this is all without ownership when you're on vacation you're not earning and you can't earn non-linearly owning equity in a company basically means you own the

Starting point is 00:30:55 upside you have to work up to the point where you can own equity in a business he's very explicit about this you have to do it even if you have a normal job, then, you know, you can invest in the stock market or maybe do like private deals, equity deals in private companies. These are the routes to wealth. It doesn't come through hours. Next page, new idea. I don't need to expound on this. Find a position of leverage. We live in an age of infinite leverage. Moving on, this is a simple way to describe the task at hand. Think about what product or service society wants but does not yet know how to get. You want to become the person who delivers it and then delivers it at scale.

Starting point is 00:31:34 That is really the challenge of how to make money. And in this section, Naval is going to expound. The note I left myself is this is the unique opportunity presented now as opposed to the past, the infinite leverage that is permissionless. He says, forget rich versus poor, white collar versus blue. It's now leveraged versus unleveraged. It's an interesting thought. The most interesting and most important form of leverage is the idea of products that have no marginal cost of replication. This is the new form of leverage. This one was only invented in the last few hundred years, and it started with a printing press. It accelerated with broadcast media and it now has really blown up with the internet. The newest form of leverage is where all the new fortunes are made. The new generation's fortunes are all made through code or media. Some more

Starting point is 00:32:21 advice from Naval, optimize for independence and control. Whenever you can in life, optimize for independence rather than pay. What you want in life is to be as far as like a blueprint, it's not that I want to do exactly what he did in life. I'm not going to invent the first quantitative hedge fund for God's sake, right? But what he figured out is this, is that he would turn down, you know, the guy was fabulously wealthy, had more money to spend. But it's not like I'm not going to chase another billion or two billion or three billion if I can't instead of spending time with my wife and, in his example, or instead of working out every day. Go look at videos of Ed Dorpey. Last time I saw him on YouTube, 87 years old, looks like he's 60 years old. And this whole time, he optimized for independence and control. He had control of his time. He lived a very balanced life, but he was successful in all different endeavors. Good. Had a great family, great health, interesting, unique career, fabulously financially successful, spent time learning all reading books, learning everything he had and then treating his life

Starting point is 00:33:34 like an adventure. I mean, that's I can't find a better blueprint. If you haven't read the book, that book is a man for all markets. You can actually read the forward. Nassim Taleb wrote the forward of the book and you can read the forward of the book online for free. I think it's on Nassim Taleb's Medium page. But I highly recommend getting that book or getting the audio book because it's Ed Dorp's autobiography and he's an absolute genius. Okay, so now we get to this part where

Starting point is 00:34:01 my note says, Warren Buffett as an illustration of Duvall's point on judgment, leverage, specific knowledge, working on the right things and compounding. And again, this is just one paragraph. Demonstrate judgment. Credibility around the judgment is so critical. Warren Buffett wins here because he has massive credibility. He has been highly accountable. He's been right over and over again in the public domain. He's built a reputation for very high integrity so you can trust him. People will throw infinite leverage behind him

Starting point is 00:34:30 because of his judgment. Nobody asks him how hard he works. Nobody asks him when he wakes up or when he goes to sleep. They're like, Warren, just do your thing. And on the very next page is an absolutely fantastic quote. Being at the extreme in your art is very important in the age of leverage. Let me read that again because it's fantastic. Being at the extreme in your art is very important in the age of leverage. Okay, skipping ahead. This is on the big three decisions. And this is not just for young people. The question is the prompt is what is the most important thing to do for younger people starting out? I don't think I think it applies to everybody. So he says, spend more time making the big decisions. There are basically three really big decisions you make in your early life, where you live, who you're with and what you do. If you're going to live, he continues to explain why, if you're going to live in a city for 10 years, if you're going to be in a job for five years, if you're going to be in a relationship for a decade, you should spend one or two years deciding these things. These are highly dominating decisions. Those three decisions really matter.

Starting point is 00:35:39 And I think Tim Urban, I think as the one I've referenced over and over again in his blog, Way But Why, I think he expounds on this. It's like almost impossible. I think on the first two, at least, if you pick the wrong spouse and you pick the wrong occupation, those are two so fundamentally important decisions. It's almost impossible. If you get those two wrong, it's almost impossible to have a content and happy life. And so let's go back to this. These are highly dominating decisions. Those three decisions really matter. You have to say no to everything and free up your time so you can solve the important problems. Those three are probably the three biggest ones. Oh, this is a very fascinating idea. And one I hope is, I've never heard, I don't know how I missed his idea on this.

Starting point is 00:36:19 I love this idea of 7 billion companies. And this is under the headline, even though this is repeated over and over again, find work that feels like play. Humans evolved as hunter and gatherers where we all worked for ourselves. It's only at the beginning of agriculture we became more hierarchical, and then the industrial revolution and factories made us extremely hierarchical because one individual couldn't necessarily own or build a factory. But now, thanks to the Internet, we're going back to an age where more and more people can work for themselves. I would rather be a failed entrepreneur than someone who never tried,

Starting point is 00:36:53 because even a failed entrepreneur has the skill set to make it on their own. There are almost 7 billion people on the planet. Someday, I hope, there will be almost 7 billion companies. And that's an idea or at least a derivative of an idea that that navals talked about for a long time i've mentioned it multiple times on the podcast it came from him he said something about like the what the future of work looks like i can't remember i want to say the company did like music distribution for for independent artists but it was a team of three people uh 100,000 paying customers and they outsourced their uh the work to bots instead of to other countries and other

Starting point is 00:37:33 humans and i think the summary involved was like this is this is what the future of look work looks like um go going back to find work that feels like play. Again, I just want to repeat that over and over again because I think it's just a fundamentally fantastic idea. I'm always working. It looks like works to others, but it feels like play to me. And that's how I know no one can compete with me on it because I'm just playing for 16 hours a day. If others want to compete with me, they're going to work and they're going to lose because they're not going to do it for 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Now, just a day, seven days a week. Now, just a random interesting thought that I highlighted.

Starting point is 00:38:10 Your real resume is just a catalog of all your suffering. If I ask you to describe your real life to yourself and you look back from your deathbed at the interesting things you've done, it's all going to be around the sacrifices you made, the hard things you did. And I have no idea why when I read that, a thought popped into my mind. Reminds me back on, I want to say Founders 134. You know what? I can just, why am I guessing, David? Triumph of Genius. Yeah, I was right. Okay. Triumph of Genius, Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War. Edwin Land, one of the most important, my argument would be one of the most important entrepreneurs ever live especially when you consider all the entrepreneurs that he that he influenced but uh he said something he was on trial and he said something that was very fascinating that um that what the the the products a company sells especially when you're creating something new

Starting point is 00:38:57 like he did he created an entire new new category right instant photography didn't exist before polaroid and so his point is like we're selling the results of our trial and error of all the failures that we had to endure through the experimentations that that result, which is winds up being the solution that we found after the thousands of things that we tried that did not work is what we sell. And he said, I'm butchering the quote, and he's a lot more gifted speaker than I am. But that was like, I'm trying to paraphrase that idea. And I like this idea of your real resume is just a catalog of all your suffering. A company is just all the experiments they ran, all the iterations that did not work with their product. They're now selling

Starting point is 00:39:35 the results of these experiments. I think it's a really, I've never heard anybody else describe a thought like that besides Edwin Lane. Just a quote from a tweet here. There is no shortcut to smart. There's an entire section on building judgment because he says your judgment is so important. If you're in an age of infinite leverage and you have crappy judgment, you're going to have a crappy output, right? My definition of wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions. Wisdom applied to external problems is judgment. They're highly linked. Knowing the long-term consequences of your actions and then making the right decision to capitalize on that. And so he talks about one part of having good judgment is to think clearly. He says clear thinker is a better compliment than

Starting point is 00:40:15 smart. And I think out of every single person I've ever studied, and I've read six books on them so far, and I'll read more in the future. I think Steve Jobs is the clearest thinker I've ever come across. And part of that is just aiming for simplicity, having an uncluttered mind, and focusing on that same idea for multiple decades. But you just hear him describe an important aspect of a business in just the clearest way I've ever heard. So it goes more, there's more, Naval expounds on this more. The really smart thinkers are clear thinkers. They understand the basics at a very, very fundamental level. I would rather understand the basics really well. This is what I mentioned earlier about sticking to fundamentals, aiming for simplicity, mastering the basics. Right. I would rather that what masters of their craft happen to do. I would rather understand the basics really well than memorize all kinds of complicated concepts I can't stitch together. The advanced concepts are less proven. We'd be better off nailing the basics. So I'm going to use, there's two examples. So, and they both come

Starting point is 00:41:18 from Kobe Bryant about this. So right before he died, unfortunately, he was one of his last interviews. I think it was with A-Rod, if I'm not mistaken. But he was talking about that. He always he's constantly talking to Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan's like his bigger brother and his his daughter. There was really a basketball, the one that unfortunately perished with with him on that that that helicopter crash. He's just like, you know, these are like 12 year old girls at the time he's like they're they're teaching their 12 year olds like all this complicated like i spent kobe spent his entire life dedicated to getting good at basketball he's like i didn't do this so he calls he's on the phone michael and um he's like dude he's like this just seems like they're over complicating

Starting point is 00:42:02 like essentially saying the coaches that are training these 12 year old girls, they're like doing all these advanced concepts when they're better off just nailing the basics, which is exactly what Naval said here. And so he asked Jordan, he's like, listen, I don't, I'm having a hard time remembering what I was doing at 12 years old. I'm pretty sure I wasn't doing all this, this, these shenanigans. And so he asked Michael, he's like, what were you doing at 12 years old? And he goes, dude, this is what Michael says. He goes dude i was playing baseball and so kobe says that and then says to his interviewers think about that let that sink in and what he's saying is like the greatest basketball player to ever live wasn't even playing the game your 12

Starting point is 00:42:34 year old daughter your 12 year old son doesn't need to know this stuff um and there's another video i keep on my phone that i constantly listen to to hype me up um and part of this is kobe talking about how important the relationship with michael was and so he says something i'm going to read this quote to you i grew this is kobe speaking obviously i grew up watching michael play my generation saw the highlights they saw the fancy stuff what i saw was his footwork i saw his spacing his timing i saw the fundamentals of the game that is what kobe is talking about what he actually studied versus what other people were studying. Right. It's like I stuck to the fundamentals. I saw his fundamentals is exactly what Naval saying.

Starting point is 00:43:13 The advanced concepts are less proven. You're better off nailing the basics. All right. Moving on. Another tweet from Naval. Very smart people tend to be weird since they insist on thinking everything through for themselves. That reminded me of one of my favorite quotes coming from David Ogilvie, personal hero of mine. Talent is most likely to be found among nonconformist dissenters and rebels. Echoing the same idea, very smart people tend to be weird since they insist on thinking everything through for themselves. Talent is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels. We got some quotes here from people that influence Naval. One quote from Richard Feynman, one quote from Warren Buffett. I never ask if I like it or don't like it. I think this is what it is or this is what it isn't. That was Richard Feynman. It is

Starting point is 00:44:01 really important for me to be honest. I don't go out of my way volunteering. This is Naval speaking. It's really interesting for me to be honest. I don't, or excuse me, really important for me to be honest. I don't go out of my way volunteering negative or nasty things. I would combine radical honesty with an old rule Warren Buffett has, which is praise specifically, criticize generally. I try to follow this. I don't always follow it, but I think I follow it enough to have made a difference in my life. I know I left myself on this next section. Repetition is persuasive, which I've also repeated over and over again. Decision making is everything.

Starting point is 00:44:32 I think people have a hard time understanding a fundamental fact of leverage. If I manage a billion dollars and I'm right 10% more often than somebody else, my decision making creates $100 million worth of value on a judgment call. With modern technology and large workforces and capital, our decisions are leveraged more and more. If you can be right more, if you can be more, excuse me, if you can be more right and more rational, you're going to get nonlinear returns in your life. And then skipping, I skipped it a little bit, but this is just a tweet. And this is something I've noticed over and over again, that the people that we study on this podcast, the greatest entrepreneurs in history are really not into diversification. It's completely counted their advice to you. If you're reading their biographies and autobiographies is completely different to what you'd get for normal advice, right? For everyday people, non misfits.

Starting point is 00:45:23 And I think of all hits on this here. The more you know, the less you diversify. Okay, so now we got a section about Naval giving us more advice collecting mental models. I'd say collect mental models slash read biographies, because I think that's what we're doing when we're downloading. I mean, somebody spends their entire life figuring out a philosophy on work through trial and error and they write it down in a book it's really we read the book we get to download that that model on work and life and you know that took five or six decades for them we can we can cover in a few hours the best mental models i have found came through evolution game theory and charlie munger and this is nival talking about him

Starting point is 00:46:03 he has tons and tons of great mental models uh author and trader nassim taleb has great mental models benjamin franklin has great mental models i boast i basically load my head full of mental models i use my tweets and other people's tweets as maxims that help compress my own learnings and recall them i'm a sucker for maxims there's two books i keep on like end tables and coffee tables in my house. One is Nassim Taleb's book on aphorisms and maxims. It's called The Bed of Procrustes and the other one is written by D. Hawk. D. Hawk, I covered back in Founders 43.

Starting point is 00:46:38 Don't guess, let me check. Yeah, Founders number 42 actually. One for many, Visa and the Rise of a Chaotic Organization. One of the most unique thinkers I've ever come across. But anyways, he wrote that book about the founding of Visa and then eventually giving up and realizing the life of business is not for himself. But in his 60s and 70s, he'd get up every morning at 530. I think he'd write a thousand words a day, something like that, spend a few hours, and then he'd work the land. That's what he wanted to do. He wanted to exhaust his body physically. But anyways, the two results of this is two books on Maxim's called Autobiography of a Restless Mind. I cannot recommend these books enough. And it's all just little ideas of knowledge that he that he thought about and wrote about over and over again. And one is written from the age of 60 to 70. And I think the other was 70 to 80 i might have the age range wrong but it's it's when he was an older gentleman and again older people are just way smarter than younger people because they just have a lot more experience um so he says i use my tweets and other people's tweets as maxims that help compress my own learnings and recall them the brain space is finite you have finite neurons so you can almost think of these as pointers addresses or mnemonics

Starting point is 00:47:42 to help you remember deep-seated principles i think of them as just prompts for thinking that's why i keep these books around i pick them up i might read you know what 10 15 maxims real quick put it down it's going to just spur your brain in some random thought deep-seated principles we have an understanding uh underlying experience to back it up mental models are really just compact ways for you to recall your own knowledge and so he talks about some of the most important mental models that he's come up with. This one comes from Munger, who in turn got it from somebody, Carl Jacoby, who probably got it from somebody else. But it's really one of the most

Starting point is 00:48:18 important ideas. And it's like, I've given up trying to be brilliant. I just want to be not dumb. If I can just be consistently not dumb for from now into the rest of my life, I'll be brilliant. I just want to be not dumb. If I can just be consistently not dumb from now into the rest of my life, I'll be okay. And it's this idea of inversion. I don't really, I don't believe I have the ability to say what is going to work. Rather, I try to eliminate what's not going to work. I think being successful is just about not making mistakes. It's not about having correct judgment. It's about avoiding incorrect judgment. So that is Naval's interpretation of Munger's inversion idea. Invert, always invert, he says over and over again in his talks and his books.

Starting point is 00:48:56 This is on compounding, the benefits of compounding. In the intellectual domain, compound interest rules. When you look at a business with 100 users growing at a compound rate of 20% per month, it can very, very quickly stack up to having millions of users. Sometimes even the founders of these companies are surprised by how large the business scales. And that applies not only to just money, to time,

Starting point is 00:49:18 but what did Warren Buffett tell that young student? Read 500 pages a day. Knowledge is the same way. It's going to compound. If you keep reading and learning now, you'll be a lot smarter or maybe a lot less dumb. Let's say it that way. We'll be a lot less dumb 10 years from now and 20 years from now and so on into the future. Naval has this great decision-making heuristic.

Starting point is 00:49:41 Let's see. So he says, if you can't decide, the answer is no. And this is the way he makes his decision. Derek Sivers, one of my favorite writers, Sivers.org, if you haven't checked out his book, his blog, it's fantastic. But he says this too. It's like, either when I'm asked a question, it's either hell yes or no. So he even takes it even almost a step further where he's just like, do I want to go get this talk? Do I want to, on this project? It's got to be hell yes. And if it's not hell yes, I'm psyched, I'm energized, I'm fired up. It's no. If you can't decide, the answer is no. If I'm faced with a difficult choice such as should I marry this person? Should I take this job? Should I buy this house? Should I move to the city? Should I go into the business with this person? If you cannot decide, the answer is no. When you choose something, you get locked in for a long time. Starting a business may take 10 years. If you start a relationship, that might be five years or maybe more. You move to a city for 10 or 20 years. These are very, very, very long-lived decisions. It is very, very

Starting point is 00:50:38 important. We only say yes when we are pretty certain. You're never going to be absolutely certain, but you've got to be very certain. So more on decision making. He has this idea of running uphill, which I love. Simple heuristic. If you're evenly split on a difficult decision, take the path more painful in the short term. Why? That path has long-term gain associated. With the law of compound interest, long-term gain is what you want to go toward. Your brain is overvaluing the side, overvaluing the side with short-term happiness and trying to avoid the one with short-term pain. So you have to cancel the tendency out and it's an absolute powerful. I don't know where that, I just added absolute. It's not in there. Let me read this over. So you

Starting point is 00:51:21 have to cancel the tendency out. It's a powerful subconscious tendency. So you cancel it out by leaning into the pain. Most of the gains in life come from suffering in the short term. He's not going to tell you to suffer your whole life, right? Most of the gains in life come from suffering the short term so you can get paid in the long term. So now he's asked the question, what are the most efficient ways to build new mental models? The Vol's answer, read a lot. Just read. It's interesting.

Starting point is 00:51:48 And that's what I think, again, reading biographies does. I was listening to an interview with Elon because Elon talks about, Elon Musk talks about reading biographies constantly. And he built a mental model of Benjamin Franklin that he expressed really simply. And he didn't use the word mental model, but he talked about it. He's like, they're asking him like, what did you get? He talks about really enjoying the Benjamin Franklin book by Walter book by walter isaacson i think that's founders number 115 and then franklin's autobiography which was uh founders number 62 so he says um one thing he learned i don't have the exact quote for me so i'm going to paraphrase but he's like

Starting point is 00:52:17 uh ben franklin not only is he one of the people that elon most admires but he's like he worked on the i'm going to butcher the quote. Let me just pull it up real quick. Well, I think in the case of Franklin, he did what needed to be done at the time it needed to be done. So he said what he learned is that Franklin did what needed to be done at the time it needed to be done. He was in different fields. He sort of thought about, okay, what's the important thing? He thought about what's the most important thing to work on now and then worked on that. Okay, so anyways, that's just popped into my mind when he said,

Starting point is 00:52:50 what are the most efficient ways to build new mental models? Read a lot, just read. And now this is on reading, goes into a lot of detail here. A genuine love for reading itself is a superpower. We live in the age of Alexandria, where every book and every piece of knowledge ever written down is a fingertip away. That means the learnings are abundant. It's the desire to learn that is scarce. I remember my grandparents' house in India. Oh, excuse me. I jumped over a part. He said reading was my first love. I remember my grandparents' house in India. I'd be a little kid on the floor going through all

Starting point is 00:53:19 my grandfather's reader digest, which is all he had to read. would read comic books story books whatever i could get my hands on these days i find myself rereading as much or more as i do uh as i do reading which i also think is a good idea i just did that um there's a bunch of books i've covered in the past i'm going to reread and do new episodes on because i think it is rereading is extremely important i just did that most recently uh with shoe dog i think like a month ago something like that um so he says i read a tweet from, something like that. So he says, I read a tweet from Illicertus that said, I don't want to read everything. I just want to read the 100 great books over and over again. That's the end of the quote. I think there's a lot to that idea. It's really more about identifying the great books for you because different books speak to

Starting point is 00:53:57 different people. Then you can really absorb those. He continues from multiple pages about reading, the importance of reading. I'm just going to pull some quotes i probably read one to two hours a day that's puts me in the top point zero zero zero zero one percent i think that alone accounts for any material success i've had in my life and any intelligence i might have real people i think read a minute a day or less making it an actual habit is the most important thing just like the worst. And so he's going to say something here to know that myself is if you don't love it, you won't do it all the time. If you don't do it all the time, you'll never master it. Just like the best workout for you is the one you're excited enough to do every day. I would say for books, blogs, whatever, the best ones to read are the

Starting point is 00:54:39 ones you're excited about reading all the time. And then he quotes Munger, as long as I have a book in my hand, I don't feel like I'm wasting time. And this is more about reading old books. There is a lot of ancient wisdom in books. Really can summarize this whole section as time is the best filter. If you're trying to learn how to drive a car or fly a plane, you should read something written in the modern age because that problem was created in the modern age. And the solution is great in the modern age. This is maybe one of my favorite paragraphs in the whole book. If you're talking about an old problem, like how to keep your body healthy, how to stay calm and peaceful, what kind of value systems are good, how to raise a family, and those kind of things, the older solutions are probably better. Any book that survived for

Starting point is 00:55:19 2,000 years has been filtered through many people. The general principles are more likely to be correct. I wanted to get back into reading those kinds of books. Two great thoughts. The first one, a calm mind, a fit body, and a house full of love. These things cannot be bought. They must be earned. And number two, the three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reversed. So our default is go after wealth, then health, then happiness. He's saying it's better to go after happiness, then health, then wealth. Just a random paragraph for you.

Starting point is 00:56:03 My summary of this is build a life that is uniquely perfect to you. This is kind of this paragraph that Naval has here is going to echo what I feel I learned from Ed Thorpe. To me, the real winners are the ones who step out of the game entirely, who don't even play the game, who rise above it. Those are the people who have such internal mental and self-control and self-awareness that they need nothing from anybody else. There's another idea that you and I have talked about

Starting point is 00:56:32 over and over again, this idea we learned all the way back on Founders number 100, but the first biography of Buffett I did, the inner scorecard versus outer scorecard. The inner scorecard is all that matters. Really try to reorient yourself around having an inner scorecard, which means as long as you're comfortable with decisions you're making, you're doing what you feel is right, then be comfortable to being misunderstood by others. That was Warren's father, who was Warren's hero. His mother was the opposite. She was constantly worried about what other people would think of her, her family, what she's wearing. That's just a sure ticket to mental torture. The reality is life is a single player game. You're born alone. You're going to

Starting point is 00:57:05 die alone. All your interpretations are alone. All your memories are alone. You're gone in three generations and nobody cares. Before you showed up, nobody cared. It's all single player. And so in this section, he's asked a question, but it doesn't say by who. Buffett has a great example when he asks if you want to be the world's best lover and known as the worst or the world's worst level lover and known as the best in reference to an inner or external scorecard. And Naval's answer, all the real scorecards are internal. OK, I got a few notes on this page. Number one, how to develop skills. Number two, we are only what we do, not what we say we are.

Starting point is 00:57:46 That's a quote from Izzy Sharp, the founder of Four Seasons. This is this entire chapter on happiness. So he says, and Duvall's point is like, it can be cultivated. It's a skill. The most important trick to be happy is to realize happiness is a skill you develop and a choice you make. You choose to be happy and you work at it. It's just like building muscles.

Starting point is 00:58:03 It's just like losing weight. It's just like succeeding at your job. It's just like building muscles. It's just like losing weight. It's just like succeeding at your job. It's just like learning calculus. You just send this is how to develop skills. He summarizes this fantastically here. You decide it's important to you. You prioritize it above everything else and you read everything on the topic. There's a lot of just random thoughts and maxims in the book.

Starting point is 00:58:24 Here's one. No exceptions. All screen activities are linked to less happiness. All non-screen activities linked to more happiness. So there's the way in my own life, I've been thinking that I've been telling friends and other people, I just become suspicious of screens. It doesn't mean,

Starting point is 00:58:37 obviously I'm addicted to them. Like almost everybody is in the modern world, but I'm very suspicious. I know there's a thousand really, really intelligent, hardworking engineers on the other side of the screen that are just trying to get more of my time and for their benefit, not mine. Another one, pick one thing, cultivate a desire and visualize it. So he's saying, you can suffer, but you have to suffer for one thing, the most important thing in your life,

Starting point is 00:58:58 not suffer for every little thing. And so that's what he's talking about. He's talking about changing habits to improve your happiness. That's the context that there so pick one thing cultivate a desire and visualize it self-discipline is a bridge to a new self-image i thought that was just great writing self-discipline is a bridge to new self-image and uh now we get to this his idea on death with that this is very similar to steve jobs saying that knowing you're going to die helps you make the biggest decision in your life that everything falls away knowing that your existence is temporary so it helps you focus and on truly what's only important navall says death is the most important thing that's ever going to happen to you when you look at your death and you acknowledge it rather than running away from it

Starting point is 00:59:35 it'll bring great meaning to your life your life is a firefly blink on a night you're here for such a brief period of time if you fully acknowledge the futility of what you're doing and then think uh then i think it can bring great happiness and peace when you realize this is a game. The idea that life is a game echoes what Phil Knight told us, Linus Tolvold's, his entire book, Just for Fun, which is a really interesting personal operating system. If you haven't read the book, it's fascinating. It's very similar, but it's a fun game. All that matters is your, this is what I feel is the most important part of this whole section. All that matters is that you experience your reality as you go through life.

Starting point is 01:00:10 Why not interpret it in the most positive way possible? Enjoy yourself. Do something positive. Project some love. Make someone happy. Laugh a little bit. Appreciate the moment and do your work. This is on the importance of saving yourself doctors don't

Starting point is 01:00:27 make you healthy nutritionists won't make you slim teachers won't make you smart gurus won't make you calm mentors won't make you rich trainers won't make you fit ultimately you have to take responsibility save yourself he has this really great idea about being yourself with passionate intensity that i love here's an expand expounding on that point your goal in life is to find the people business project or art that need you the most there is something out there just for you what you don't want to do is build checklists and decision frameworks built on what other people are doing you're never going to be them you're never going to be good at being somebody else so summarize be yourself with passionate

Starting point is 01:01:06 intensity another tweet that relates to that idea to make an original contribution you have to be irrationally obsessed with something to make an original contribution you have to be irrationally obsessed with something there's three random sentences that all mean three different things to me on the same page one is that a lot can change in one this is my note to myself a lot can change in one lifetime fight resistance which is a quote from um steven pressfield's great book war of art and number three master the fundamentals number one remember i started as a poor kid in india if i can make it anybody can two, if there's something you

Starting point is 01:01:45 want to do later, do it now. There is no later. And then number three, this is his answer to the question. How do you personally learn about new subjects? Mostly, I just stay on the basics. I stick to the basics. More on saving yourself. He says the modern struggle is lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower, fasting, meditating, and exercising against armies of scientists and statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, and medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games, and addictive drugs. So again, that's really the addition by subtraction idea that he had earlier. And this is just some more random musings on his own philosophy. This is what I felt was a great way to put the act of becoming a parent. The moment you have a child, it's this really weird thing. But it answers the meaning of life, the purpose of life question.

Starting point is 01:02:39 All of the sudden, the most important thing in the universe moves from being in your body into the child's body. That changes you. Your values inherently become a lot less selfish. He talks about the present is all you have. And then he's going to quote, there's just a great quote here from Homer in the Iliad. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier

Starting point is 01:03:05 than you are now, and you will never be here again. Here's a shot of optimism for you. The democratization of technology allows anyone to be a creator, entrepreneur, scientist. The future is brighter. And I love this idea. The truth is I don't read for self-improvement. I read out of curiosity and interest the best book is the one you'll devour and I devoured this book and I would say reading that improvement from reading is just a byproduct of reading you don't have to set off for self-improvement it's just going to happen on its own and then I will close on a list of rules so think of these as a maxim.

Starting point is 01:03:48 And then the very last thing I'll tell you is a tweet from him, which is fantastic. And let's go with Naval's rules. Be present above all else. Desire is suffering. Anger is hot coal you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at someone else. If you can't see yourself working with someone for life, don't work with them for a day. Reading and learning is the ultimate meta skill that can be traded for anything else. All the real benefits in life come from compound interest.

Starting point is 01:04:25 Earn with your mind, not your time. 99% of all effort is wasted. Total honesty at all times. It's almost always possible to be honest and positive. Praise specifically, criticize generally. Truth is that which has predictive power. Watch every thought. All greatness comes from suffering.

Starting point is 01:04:58 Love is given, not received. Enlightenment is the space between your thoughts. Mathematics is the language of nature. Every moment has to be complete in and of itself. And I'll end on this. Health, love, and your mission in that order. Nothing else matters. And that is where I'll leave it.

Starting point is 01:05:24 For the full story, read the book. I'll leave the link if you want to read it for free online. But if you want the paperback version, I'll leave a link in the show notes as well. If you buy the book using that link, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is 191 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.

Founders - #191 Naval Ravikant (A Guide to Wealth and Happiness)

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