Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur and angel investor, a co-author of Venture Hacks, and a co-maintainer of AngelList.

I've been absorbing your information and listening to you talk for quite a while now, so it's great to actually meet you.

You are 1 of the rare guys that is, you're a big investor, you're deep in the tech world, but yet you seem to have a very balanced perspective in terms of how to live life as opposed to not just be entirely focused on success and financial success and tech investing, but rather how to live your life in a happy way.

Yeah, I think the reason why people like Hearing me is because like if it's like if you go to a circus and you see a bear, right?

That's kind of interesting but not that much if you see a unicycle, that's interesting, but you see a bear on a unicycle That's really interesting, Right?

So when you combine things you're not supposed to combine, people get interested.

Striking thoughts, philosophy, plus martial arts.

And I think it's because at some level all humans are broad.

We're all multivariate, but we get summarized in pithy ways in our lives.

And at some deep level, we know that's not true, right?

Every human basically is capable of every experience and every thought.

You're a UFC comedian, commentator, podcaster, but you're also more than that.

You're also a father, lover, thinker, et cetera.

So I like the model of life that the ancients had, the Greeks, the Romans, right, where you would start out and when you're young, you're just like going to school, then you're going to war, then you're running a business, then you're supposed to serve in the Senate or the government, then you become a philosopher.

There's sort of this arc to life where you try your hand at everything.

And as 1 of my friends says, specialization is for insects, right?

So everyone should just be able to do everything and so I don't believe in this model anymore of Trying to focus your life down on 1 thing.

I couldn't agree more and I think that sometimes people find certain success in whatever the endeavor is and then they think that that is their niche and they stick with it and they never change and they almost out of fear.

It's hard because there's a, you know, the analogy around mountain climbing.

Like if you find a mountain and you start climbing and you spend your whole life climbing it and you get say 2 thirds of the way.

And then you see the peak is like way up there, but you're 2 thirds of the way up, you're still really high up.

But now to go the rest of the way, you're gonna have to go back down to the bottom and look for another path.

And it's the nature of later in life that you just don't have the time.

So it's very painful to go back down and look for a new path, but that may be the best thing to do.

And that's why when you look at the greatest artists and creators, They have this ability to start over that nobody else does.

Like Elon will be called an idiot and start over doing something brand new that he supposedly is not qualified for.

Or when Madonna or Paul Simon or U2 come out with a new album, their existing fans usually hate it because they've adopted a completely new style that they've learned somewhere else.

And a lot of times they'll just miss completely.

So you have to be willing to be a fool and kind of have that beginner's mind and go back to the beginning to start over.

If you're not doing that, you're just getting older.

Yeah, I mean, I don't even know if it's willing to be a fool.

It's just, to me, the most exciting thing is to try to get better at something, to learn things.

I mean, it's really exciting when you just have incremental progress in something that you're completely new to.

Yeah, I live for the aha moment, that moment when you connect 2 things together that you hadn't connected together before and it fits nicely and solidly and it kind of helps form a steel framework of understanding in your mind that you can then hang other ideas off of, that's what I live for.

You know, my little son is always asking why, why, why, why, why, and I always try and answer him and half the times I realize, actually I don't really understand why.

I just have a memorized answer for you, but that's not really understanding.

Yeah, those are weird conversations, right?

When you're talking to your kids and you say, look, the reality is I don't know a lot of things.

And there's certain things that you just can't know.

Yeah, you realize that, you know, you have, you have answers for a few things that you've thought through.

Then you sort of have cover-ups, like trap doors, like don't go here, this is just a cover-up, I don't really know the answer to what the meaning of life is or how we got here.

And then you've got a whole bunch of memorized stuff, because a lot of intelligence these days is just the external brain pack of civilization.

I know how to look them up and I've memorized some of them.

And I kind of understand how money works and the Federal Reserve prints it and what this government thing is, but not really.

Not good enough to teach it in university.

I think people do that with almost everything in life these days in terms of like have a like a 1 page, a 1 sheet, like a brief summary of what the explanation for what this very complex subject might be.

Don't give me the lecture, give me the book.

Don't give me the book, give me the blog post.

Don't give me the blog post, give me the tweet.

I got really fascinated by the way you read Because I thought there was something wrong with me by doing that.

But you don't really just read a book to completion.

You read and then you pick something else up and you just kind of go based on your whims, whatever you're interested in.

I was raised by a single mom in New York and she used the local library as a daycare center because it was a very tough neighborhood.

And so she would basically say, when you get back from school, go straight to the library and don't come out until I pick you up late at night.

So I used to basically live in the library and I read everything.

I read every magazine, I read every pictograph, I read every book, I read every map.

So I got over this idea of that reading a large number of books or reading a book to completion as a vanity metric.

Because really, when people are putting up photos on Twitter and Instagram of look at my pile of books that I'm reading, it's a show off thing, it's a signaling thing.

And the reality is I would rather read the best hundred books over and over again until I absorb them rather than read all the books.

Because your brain has finite information, in a finite space, You get enough advice, it all cancels to 0.

There's a lot of nonsense in books out there too.

So I don't read anymore to complete books.

I read to satisfy my genuine intellectual curiosity.

And it can be anything, it could be nonsense, it could be history, it could be fiction, it could be science, it could be sci-fi.

These days it's mostly sci-fi, philosophy, science, because that's just what I'm interested in.

So a really good book, I will flip through.

I won't actually read it consecutively in order and I won't even just even finish it.

I'm looking for ideas, things that I don't understand.

And when I find something really interesting, I'll reflect on it, I'll research it.

And then when I'm bored of it, I'll drop it or I'll flip to another book.

Thanks to electronic books, I've got 50, 70 books open at any time in my Kindle or iBooks and I'm just bouncing around between them.

It's also a little bit of a defense mechanism to how In modern society, we get too much information too quickly, and so our attention spans are very low.

So you get Twitter, you get Instagram, you get Facebook, you're just used to being bombarded with information.

So you can take that to, you can view that as a negative and be like, I have no attention span, or you could view that as a positive.

I multitask really well and I can dig really fast.

If I find a thread that's interesting, I can follow it through 5 social networks, through the web, through the libraries, through the books, and I can really get to the bottom of this thing very quickly.

It's like the Library of Alexandria that I can research at my disposal So I no longer track books read or even care about books read it's about understanding concepts

First of all, the the social media aspect of books and basically anything It's like it's such a weird way to display your life because it's, you know, you're displaying the best aspects of your life in some sort of a glass case.

You know, it's an unrealistic version of your life that you cultivate and you curate.

I mean, I pose with my dog every time I run.

It's like, rather than really looking at yourself, you're looking at how other people look at you, so it's like this 1 removed mental image.

And it's kind of a disease, because social media is making celebrities of all of us, and celebrities are the most miserable people in the world.

Right, because they have this strong self image that gets built up, It gets built up by compliments.

Every time somebody pays you or me a compliment, and we're like, oh, well, thank you, right?

Then that builds up an image of who we are.

And then 1 idiot comes along, 1 out of 10, 1 out of 100, and they can easily tear it down.

Because it doesn't take many insults to cancel out a lot of compliments.

And now you're carrying around this big weighty self-image and it's just very easy to be attacked.

And because you're famous or you're well-known, people wanna attack you.

Like 1 of my tweets is, and these are all reminders to myself is you want to be rich and anonymous not poor and famous?

Of course, of course, but we wouldn't do it.

It has unusual problems that you don't get trained for And you really will not understand unless you experience it.

You know, I was having this conversation with my wife.

We were talking about People that just come up to you and they don't care what you're doing They don't care if I'm with my daughter if I'm holding her if I'm feeding her for you know we're in the middle of an intense conversation.

She's crying She could be crying and some bro will come over and just immediately have to take a picture doesn't care his needs supersede the daughter and my wife was saying I that Before she knew me she used to think that that's just part of the price of being famous that people people like you That's just part of the price being famous and now when it interrupts her life and you know It interrupts the children and interrupts friends and you know, she now she's like this is annoying like this is not this is not healthy This is not a smart way to interact with people and that people have this weird Challenge this weird thing that if you're if you become famous There's this weird challenge where people just want to come to you especially today Because if they can get a photo of you, then that boosts their social media profile.

Like, hey, I'm sitting here with the vault.

It tells us we are getting something out of it.

So there are times when someone will approach me in public and I'm a little resentful.

And there are other times when I'm just like, actually, I'm really grateful that I worked for this.

But you have a different sort of celebrity too, right?

You're a hero amongst investors, and amongst, I mean, you've just

been a part of- I'm a hero among young male geeks.

Right, but that's not the kind of celebrity I think most people set out to get, especially most guys, right?

Yeah, I look at my brief little YouTube clips.

I have a tiny little podcast going now, and it's like 95% male.

You do that 1 very small podcast where you just have small, like 3 or 4 minute clips.

Yeah, so what it was, I did a tweetstorm called How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky, and it got pretty popular on Twitter.

And it's really about wealth creation, I just used the ClickBait-y title.

And it's trying to basically lay out timeless principles of wealth creation that if you absorb them, you become the kind of person who can create wealth, create business, make money.

And my theory behind that is like, there are 3 things everybody wants.

There's actually more than 3, but let's just start with 3, the 3 basics.

Everybody wants to be wealthy, everybody wants to be happy, and everybody wants to be fit.

And I know there's a lot of virtue signaling that goes on, like we don't want money, and I don't care about being happy and happiness is for stupid people.

But let's face it, you wanna be rich and happy and healthy.

Now, of course, you also want an internally calm state of mind, you want a loving household.

So there are other things that come into it, but those 3, I think they can actually be taught.

There are a lot of people who you've had on here, including yourself, who know a heck of a lot more about fitness and health than I do.

But I was born poor and miserable, and I'm now pretty well off and I'm very happy.

And so I try to lay them out, but in a timeless manner, where you can kind of figure it out yourself.

Because at the end of the day, I can't really teach anything.

I can only inspire you and maybe give you a few hooks so you can remember things when they happen, or put a name to them.

So this podcast actually ended up explaining this tweet storm.

So there's a tweet storm of like 36, 38 tweets, got very famous, got translated to dozens of languages.

And these were principles that I came up with for myself when I was really young, around 13, 14.

And I've been carrying them in my head for 30 years.

And over time, I just realized like, sadly or fortunately, the thing that I got really good at was looking at businesses and figuring out the point of maximum leverage to actually create wealth and capture some of that.

And do it in a very long-term kind of way, not the banker, crash the economy, get bailed out kind of way.

But build businesses and help people and provide value kind of way.

Especially when applied to modern technology and leverage in this age of infinite leverage that we live in.

So the podcast is just explaining each tweet.

I don't like to say the same thing twice.

I just, I feel like if you have something original and interesting to say, you should say it.

Otherwise, it's probably been said better.

So that podcast tries to be information dense.

I think you need the principles that if you absorb these and you work hard over 10 years, you get what you want.

I'm going to attempt to do 1 on happiness is a big word, but you know, happiness and inner peace and calm and all that.

Because what you want is, you don't want to be the guy who succeeds in life while being high strung, high stress and unhappy and leaving a trail of emotional wreckage with you and your loved ones.

Because you gotta focus and it's very hard to be great at everything You want to be the guy or the gal who gets there calmly, you know quietly without struggle You want to be the person who's the when there's a crisis going on you want to be the calmest, coolest cucumber in the room who still also figures out the correct answer.

You were 1 of the things you were saying is that you feel like happiness is something that you can learn.

And then you can teach yourself to be happy, even just by Adopting the mindset that you are a happy person and proclaiming that to your friends And so you've sort of developed a social contract.

I'm a happy person and the law I have to live up to that

Yeah, I've got hundreds of techniques, but the How did

Humans have a need to be highly consistent with their past pronouncements.

the way I started my first tech company was I was working inside a larger organization and I told everybody that I was gonna go start a company.

I was like, I hate this place, I'm gonna do my own thing, I'm gonna be a successful entrepreneur.

6 months passed, 9 months passed, then people start, you're still here?

I thought you were gonna go start a company.

Like if you wanna give up drinking, right?

And you're not serious about it, you'll say, I'm gonna cut back.

But if you're serious, you'll announce it on Facebook.

You'll tell all your friends, you'll tell your wife, you'll say, I'm done drinking, I'm throwing everything out of the house, you'll never see me drink again.

When you say that, you know you're serious.

So I think a lot of these are choices that we make and happiness is just 1 of those choices.

And this is unpopular to say, because there are people who are actually depressed, you know, chemically or what have you.

And there are people who don't believe that it's possible because then it creates a responsibility on them.

It says, oh, now if I'm, you're saying if I'm not happy, that's my fault.

I'm not saying that, But I'm saying that just like fitness can be a choice health can be a choice nutrition can be a choice Working hard and making money can be a choice happiness is also a choice if you're so smart How come you aren't happy?

That's my challenge to all the people who think they're so smart and so capable.

If you're so smart and capable, why can't you change this?

There are a bunch of people though that actually take pleasure in being miserable.

There's something about the pursuit of excellence and of success that supersedes all other pursuits that In their eyes it is it is the the peak the pinnacle the most important thing.

It's not a trade-off I would argue that it now when I say happy happy is 1 of those words that means a zillion different things.

It's like love, right, what does that mean?

Yeah, define it a little bit more tightly, right?

I'm not saying anything original, but desire to me is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.

So when I'm unhappy about something, I look for what is the underlying desire that I have that's not being fulfilled.

It's okay to have desires You're a biological creature and you put on this earth.

You have to have desires You have a mission, but don't have too many don't pick them up unconsciously.

Don't pick them up randomly Don't have thousands of them.

My coffee is too cold, doesn't taste quite right.

Whatever it is, pick your 1 overwhelming desire.

It's okay to suffer over that 1, but on all the others, you wanna let them go so you can be calm and peaceful and relaxed.

Most people, when you're unhappy, like a depressed person, it's not that they have a very clear, calm mind, they're too busy in their mind.

Well, if you wanna be a high performance athlete, how good of an athlete are you gonna be if you're always having epileptic seizures?

If you're always like twitching and running around and like jumping and your limbs are flailing out of control?

The same way, if you wanna be effective in business, you need a clear, calm, cool, collected mind.

Warren Buffett plays bridge all day long and goes for walks in the sun.

He doesn't sit around, like constantly loading his brain with nonstop information and getting worked up about every little thing.

What I mean by that is that your actions can be multiplied a thousand fold, either by broadcasting at a podcast, or by investing capital, or by having people work for you, or by writing code.

So because of that, the impacts of good decision making are much higher than they used to be.

Because now you can influence thousands or millions of people through your decisions or your code.

So a clear mind leads to better judgment, leads to better outcome.

So a happy, calm, peaceful person will make better decisions and have better outcomes.

So if you want to operate at peak performance, you have to learn how to tame your mind, just like you have to learn how to tame your body.

Warren Buffett might not be the best example because he drinks like I think 6 coca-colas a day and he eats mostly McDonald's

and he's still alive somehow something shows you that low stress is more but

Charlie Munger's I think in his 90s, right?

And that's probably, maybe there is a trade-off, right?

Like maybe him enjoying that junk food and that Coke, just ah, that pleasing of the mind is maybe better than him just eating wheatgrass shots and kale salads and just being, yeah, just super worked up about everything

It's like if you need your glass of red wine and de-stress and calm down That's probably better than you flying off the rails,

Right, and I think that that's applicable not just in business But in probably any pursuit And I like what you're saying about allow that 1 thing to be your obsession but everything else just you know, learn how to learn how to let things go pick your battles

and We'd like to think that We'd like to view the world as linear which is I'm gonna put in 8 hours of work, I'm gonna get back 8 hours of output, right?

Guy running the corner grocery store is working just as hard or harder than you and me.

What you do, who you do it with, how you do it, way more important than how hard you work, right?

Outputs are non-linear based on the quality of the work that you put in.

We're closer to carnivores in our omnivorous development than we are to herbivores.

Future generation will look back at us as worse than slavers, you know, because the Holocaust we're committing with the animals, but they'll have artificial meats that taste and are healthier, is better than the real thing.

allegedly, but so as a, as a modern knowledge worker athlete, as an intellectual athlete, you want to function like an athlete, which means you train hard, then you sprint, then you rest, then you reassessed, you get your feedback loop, then you train some more, then you sprint again, then you rest, then you reassess.

This idea that you're gonna have linear output just by cranking every day at the same amount of time.

No, I agree wholeheartedly, but for people that are working for someone, there's not really that option.

That's kind of where my tweet storm starts, which is, first of all, the first thing, if you're gonna make money, is that you're not gonna get rich renting out your time.

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Joe Rogan Experience #1309 - Naval Ravikant