44 Harsh Truths About The Game Of Life - Naval Ravikant (4K)

Chris Williamson 0:00 Happiness is being satisfied with what you have, success comes from dissatisfaction. Is success worth it then?

Naval Ravikant 0:08 Oof. I'm not sure that statement is true anymore. Like, I made that statement a long time ago, and a lot of these things are just notes to myself, and they're highly contextual. They come in the moment, they leave in the moment. Uh, happiness, okay, so very complicated topic, but I always liked the Socrates story where he goes into the marketplace and they show him all these luxuries and fineries and he says, "How many things there are in this world that I do not want?" Right? And that's a form of freedom, so not wanting something that is as good as having it. In the old story with Alexander, Dionysius, right? Alexander goes out and conquers the world, then he meets Dionysius who's living in a barrel, and Dionysius says, "Get out of the way, you're blocking my sun." And Alexander says, "Oh, how I wish I, you know, could be like Dionysius in the next life," and Dionysius says, "That's the difference. I don't wish that I could..." Sorry, Diogenes, Diogenes. Diogenes says, "I- I- I don't wish to be Alexander." So two paths to happiness, and, uh, one path is for success, you get what you want, you satisfy your material needs, or like Diogenes, you just don't want it in the first place. And I'm not sure which one is more valid. Um, and it also depends what you define as success. If the end goal is happiness, then why not cut to the chase and just go straight for it?

Chris Williamson 1:21 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 1:21 Uh, does being happy make you less successful? That is a conventional wisdom that may even be the practical earned experience of your reality. You find that when you're happy you don't want anything so you don't get up and do anything. On the other hand, you know, you still gotta do something. You're an animal. You're here, you're here to survive, you're here to replicate, you're driven, you're motivated, you're gonna do something. You're not just gonna sit there all day. Unlikely. Some people do, maybe it's in their nature, but I think most people still want to act. They want to live in the arena. Uh, I've found for myself as I've become, uh, happier is a big word, but you know, more peaceful, more calm, more present, more, uh, satisfied with what I have. Uh, I still want to do things, I just wanna do bigger things. I wanna do things that are more pure, more aligned with, uh, what I think needs to be done and what I can uniquely do. So in that sense, I think that being happier can actually make you more successful, but your definition of success will likely change along the way.

Chris Williamson 2:19 Is that a realization you think you could've gotten to had you have not had some success in the first place?

Naval Ravikant 2:26 At least for me, I always wanted to take the path of material success first. I was not going to go be an ascetic and sit there and renounce everything. That just seems too unrealistic and too painful. Uh, in the story of Buddha, he starts out as a prince, and then he sees that it's all kind of meaningless because you're still gonna get old and die, and then he goes into the woods looking for something more. I'll take the happy route that involves material success, thank you. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 2:54 I think it's quicker in some ways. You know, y- one of your, uh, insights is it's far easier to achieve our material desires than it is to renounce them. And, uh-

Naval Ravikant 3:04 It depends on the person, but, uh, I- I think you have to try that path. If you want something, go get it. Uh, you know, like I- I- I quip that the reason to win the game is to be free of it. So you- you play the games, you win the games, and then you get, hopefully you get bored of the games. You don't wanna just keep looping on the same game over and over, although a lot of these games are very enticing and have many levels and are relatively open-ended.

Chris Williamson 3:26 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 3:27 Uh, and then you become free of the game, uh, in a sense that you're no longer trying to win it. You know you can win it, uh, and either you move to a different game or you play the game for the sheer joy of it.

Chris Williamson 3:38 Mm. Yeah, you, another one of yours, most of the gains in life come from suffering in the short term so you can get paid in the long term. I think-

Naval Ravikant 3:46 That's classic. That, that...

Chris Williamson 3:47 ... winning the marshmallow test-

Naval Ravikant 3:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:48 ... on a daily basis. But, uh, there's an interesting challenge where I think people need to avoid becoming, uh, a suffering addict. Sort of using suffering as the proxy for progress as opposed to the outcome of the suffering. Right? It's like, "I was in pain not eating the marshmallow. I was in pain doing this work. I have attached well-being and satisfaction to pain, not to what the pain gets me on the other side of it."

Naval Ravikant 4:15 If you define pain as physical pain, then it's a real thing. It happens and you can't ignore it. But that's not what we mean by suffering. Suffering is mostly mental anguish and mental pain, and it just means you don't want to do the task at hand. Uh, if you were fine doing the task at hand, then you wouldn't be suffering. And then the question is, what's more effective, to suffer along the way or just to interpret it in a way that it's not suffering? You hear from a lot of successful people, they look back and they say, "Oh, the journey was the fun part," right? "That was actually the entertaining part and I should've enjoyed it more."

Chris Williamson 4:45 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 4:45 It's a common regret. Uh, there's a little thought exercise I like to do which is, you can go back into your own life and, uh, try to put yourself in the exact position you were in five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, and you try to remember, okay, who was I with, what was I doing, what was I feeling, what were my emotions, what were my objectives? And really, really try to transport yourself back and see if there's any advice you'd give yourself, anything you'd do differently. Now, you don't have new information. Don't pretend you could've gone back and-

Chris Williamson 5:16 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 5:16 ... you know, bought a stock or bought, bought Bitcoin or whatever. But just knowing what you know now in terms of your temperament and a little bit of age-related experience, how would you have done things differently? And I think it's a worthwhile exercise to do, so don't let me rob you of the conclusion, but I'll tell you for me, uh, I would have done everything the same except I would have done it with less anger, less emotion, less internal suffering, because that was optional, it wasn't necessary.

Chris Williamson 5:44 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 5:45 And I would argue that someone who can do the job, uh, at least peacefully but maybe happily is gonna be more effective than someone who has unnecessary emotional turmoil.

Chris Williamson 5:55 Will you end up with a series of miserable successes?Right, the outcome may have been the same, but-

Naval Ravikant 6:02 Right.

Chris Williamson 6:02 ... the entire experience of getting there.

Naval Ravikant 6:04 And, and the journey is not only the reward, the journey is the only thing there is. (laughs) You know, s- uh, e- even success, it's human nature to bank it very, very quickly, right? Because the normal loop that we run through is you sit around, you're bored, then you want something, then when you want something, you decide you're not gonna be happy until you get that thing. Then you start your bout of suffering or anticipation while you strive to get that thing. If you get that thing, then you get used to it, and then you get bored again. Then a few months later, you want something else. And if you don't get it, then you're unhappy for a bit, and then you get over it, and then you want something else, right? That's the normal cycle. So, whether you're happy or unhappy at the end, it tends not to last. Now, I don't want to be glib and say that, "Oh, there's no point in making money or being successful." There, there absolutely is, money solves all your money problems, so it is good to have money. Um, that said, there are those, uh, those stories, I- I don't know if you've seen those studies, I don't know how real these are. A lot of these psych studies don't replicate, but it's a fun, fun little study that shows that, uh, people who break their back and people who win the lottery are back to their baseline happiness two years later.

Chris Williamson 7:08 Yep.

Naval Ravikant 7:09 Again, I don't know if that's entirely true. I think money can buy you happiness if you earned it, because then along the way, you have both pride and confidence in yourself, and you have a sense of accomplishment, and you, you know, set out to do something, and you were right. So, I- I'll bet that lingers. And then, as I said, money solves your money problems. So, I don't want to be too glib about it, but I would say in general, this, this loop that we run through, um, of desire, dopamine, fulfillment, unfulfillment, like you, you have to enjoy the journey. The journey's all there is, (laughs) right?

Chris Williamson 7:39 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 7:39 99% of your time is spent on the journey, so what kind of a journey is it if you're not gonna enjoy

Naval Ravikant 7:43 it?

Chris Williamson 7:43 How do you shortcut that desire contract?

Naval Ravikant 7:48 You could focus, you could decide that, "I don't want most things." I, I think we have a lot of unnecessary desires that we just pick up everywhere. We have opinions on everything, judgments on everything. Uh, so I think just knowing that those are the source of unhappiness, uh, will make you be choosy about your desires.

Chris Williamson 8:05 Hm.

Naval Ravikant 8:05 And frankly, if you want to be successful, you have to be choosy about your desires. You have to focus.

Chris Williamson 8:09 You can't be great at everything.

Naval Ravikant 8:11 You can't be great at everything. You're just gonna waste your energy and waste your time.

Chris Williamson 8:14 Is fame a worthwhile goal?

Naval Ravikant 8:18 Uh, it gets you invited to better parties. (laughs) It gets you into better restaurants. Uh, fame, so f- fame is this funny thing where a lot of people know you, but you don't know them, and, uh, it does get you put on a pedestal. Uh, it can get you what you want, uh, at a, at a distance, so I wouldn't say it's worthless. Obviously, people want it for a reason. Um, it's high status, so it attracts the opposite sex, uh, especially for men, it attracts women. Uh, that said, it is high cost. It means you have no privacy. Um, you do have weirdos and lunatics. Uh, you do get hit up a lot for weird things. Uh, and you're on a stage, so you're forced to perform, so you're forced to be consistent with your past proclamations and actions, and you're gonna have haters and all that nonsense. But the fact that we do it, the fact that we all seem to want it means that it would be disingenuous to say, "Oh, no, no, I'm famous," but you don't want to be famous.

Chris Williamson 9:09 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 9:10 Um, that said, I think fame, like anything else, is best produced as a... or pursued as a byproduct of something potentially more worthwhile. Um, wanting to be famous and craving to be famous and being famous for being famous, these are sort of traps.

Chris Williamson 9:26 Fame for fame's sake.

Naval Ravikant 9:27 Yeah, exactly. So, it's better that it's earned fame. Uh, so for example, earned respect in the tribe is you do things that are good for the tribe. Uh, who are the most famous people in human history? Uh, they're, uh, you know, they're, they're people who sort of transcended the self, the Buddhas and the Jesuses and the Mohammeds of the world. Who else is famous? Uh, the artists are famous, you know, art lasts for a long time. The scientists are famous, they discover a thing. The conquerors are famous, presumably because they conquered for their tribe, there was someone that they were fighting for. So, generally, the higher up you rise by doing things for greater and greater groups of people, even though it may be considered tyrannical or negative, like, uh, you know, Genghis Khan is famous, but, uh, to the Mongols, he was doing good, to the rest of them, not so much. Uh, (laughs) the higher level you're operating at, the more people you're taking care of, the more you sort of earn respect and fame, and I think those are good reasons to be famous. I- if, if fame is empty, if you're famous just 'cause your name showed up in a lot of places or your face showed up in a lot of places, then that's a hollow fame, and I think deep down, you will know that. And so, it'll be fragile, and you'll always be afraid of losing it, and then you'll be forced to perform.

Chris Williamson 10:36 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 10:36 So, the kind of fame that, uh, pure actors and celebrities have, I wouldn't want. But the kind of fame that's earned because you did something useful, uh, why dodge that? Now, you can.

Chris Williamson 10:47 There's a challenge, I think, especially if people make, uh, very loud public proclamations about things. You mentioned there about, um, you're almost a hostage to the things that you used to say, that, um, being able to update your opinions and change your mind-

Naval Ravikant 11:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:03 ... looks very similar to the internet as hypocrisy does. You know, n- n- the difference between me saying something in the past and saying something different now is perhaps I've learned, perhaps I've updated my beliefs.

Naval Ravikant 11:13 Right.

Chris Williamson 11:14 But so few people do it in a legitimate way, I think that the grifter shill, "You, uh, y- see, this is the, the, the, the, uh, smoking gun that shows that he didn't really believe that thing all along."

Naval Ravikant 11:23 Right.

Chris Williamson 11:24 And, uh, yeah, I, I went to a retreat in LA a couple of years ago, and there was a guy that I used to follow, the... a big, um, business and productivity advice content creator, really, really successful, and he just totally stepped back from everything-

Naval Ravikant 11:37 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:37 ... and went, uh, like monk mode and focused on his business. And I asked him why, and he said, uh, "I started feeling like I had to live up to in private the things that I was saying in public."

Naval Ravikant 11:47 Right.

Chris Williamson 11:48 Uh...

Naval Ravikant 11:48 Yeah, it, it's, uh, it's, uh, what was it that, uh, who said it was it Mencken that, uh, um, "Foolish consistency is a hobgoblin of little minds," (laughs) right? Um, but, eh, essentially, look, all life is er- all learning is error correction, right? Every knowledge creation system works through correcting errors, making guesses and correcting errors. So by definition, if you're learning, you're gonna be wrong most of the time, and you'll be updating your priors. And so for example, I did this Joe Rogan podcast, I don't know, it's like eight or nine years ago, um-... and people will call out, like, the one thing that didn't turn out to be correct (laughs) , right? And it's just, like, and they just beat on it because it, it helps them, in their mind, raise their status a little bit, "Aha, I caught him in an error." Well, I think if you catch someone in a blatant lie, where they're, is believe one thing and they say another, that's legit. That's a character flaw. They shouldn't be lying. But on the other hand, if they just made a guess at something and they got it wrong, and by the way, mostly it's about the AI AGI thing, and I think I'm still right about that (laughs) , but it's a different story.

Chris Williamson 12:43 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 12:43 Um, people who think we have achieved AGI just failed a touring test from their side.

Chris Williamson 12:49 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 12:49 But, uh, uh, it, it's funny how people latch onto single proclamations, but the reality is all of us are dynamical systems. We're always changing, we're always learning, we're always growing, and, uh, hopefully we're correcting errors. What you don't wanna be doing is lying in public, so that, because you're, you're trying to look good, and I think people can smell that. I, I, I, what this world really lacks right now is authenticity, and because everybody wants something. They wanna be seen as something. They wanna be something that they're not. And so you do catch a lot of people, uh, saying things that they don't really believe, and I think people are very sensitive to that.

Chris Williamson 13:25 Uh, bullshit radars have become hyper-sensitized to try and work out whether or not this person means the thing that they're saying.

Naval Ravikant 13:31 Yeah. I mean, they, they, a lot of people are wrong. Most of us are wrong most of the time, especially in any new endeavor in any new-

Chris Williamson 13:37 Difference between being wrong and disingenuous, though.

Naval Ravikant 13:39 Correct.

Chris Williamson 13:39 Purposely wrong.

Naval Ravikant 13:40 Correct. Exactly.

Chris Williamson 13:41 And pride.

Naval Ravikant 13:41 So, I think, I think that's the big difference. If someone is wrong, no big deal, as long as they have a genuine reason for saying what they're saying or believing what they're believing. But if they are lying to elevate their status or their appearance or to live up to some expectation, that's the mistake. And that's a mistake not just for the listener, it's a mistake for themselves, 'cause then you're gonna get trapped in a hall of mirrors. You yourself are gonna be consistent with your past proclamations, so if you're lying to others, you're gonna be lying to yourself.

Chris Williamson 14:06 You're, you're puppeted by a person that you are not even.

Naval Ravikant 14:09 That's right. Yeah. It's, it's, like, uh, what, what was that line? There's, you're, you're basically trying to impress people who, you know, don't care about you. Um, so, and, and-

Chris Williamson 14:18 They don't like the real you, and if they saw the real you, they wouldn't care, and the people who would like the real you don't get to see the real you, so they pass you by.

Naval Ravikant 14:25 Right. You, you only want the respect of the very, very few people that you respect. Uh, trying to demand respect from the masses is a fool's errand.

Chris Williamson 14:35 Status games, the allure of accruing, whether it's fame, actual fame or just the competition/comparison trap, it's always there. Uh, there's a real draw of being swayed by social approval. How should people learn to get less distracted by status games in that way?

Naval Ravikant 14:55 I think it, it just helps to see that status games don't matter as much as they used to. Uh, in old society, let's go back hunter-gatherer times, there was no such thing as wealth. You just had what you could carry. Um, there was no stored wealth, so wealth games didn't really exist, or wealth creation games. All that existed was status games. If you were high status, then you got what little was available first. Um, but even back then, you had to earn your status by taking care of the tribe. Uh, now we have wealth creation, where you can actually create a product or a service, you can scale that product or service, and you can provide abundance for a lot of people. Uh, and that's not zero sum. That's a positive sum game. I can be wealthy. You can be wealthy. We can create things together, and clearly, since we are all collectively far, far wealthier than we were in hunter-gatherer times, uh, wealth creation is positive. But status is limited. There's limited status to go around. It's a ranking ladder. It's a hierarchy, and so to rise in status, somebody else has to lower in status. Now, you can have multiple kinds of status, so you can expand some kinds of status, but it's not like wealth creation, where it can go infinitely, where we can all be, you know, living in the stars and moon bases or Mars colonies or what have you. So, just realize that status games are inherently limited. Uh, they're always combative. Um, they're always require, uh, direct combat, whereas, uh, wealth creation games can be just you creating products. You don't have to fight anybody else. Yes, in the marketplace your product has to succeed, but that's not quite the same as, uh, invective against other people or being angry with other people or feeling pushed down or pushed up or having a beef with somebody.

Chris Williamson 16:28 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 16:28 So, I would argue that wealth creation games are both more pleasant, uh, they're positive sum, and they actually have, uh, concrete material returns. If you have more money, you can buy more things because-

Chris Williamson 16:37 Show me why you can-

Naval Ravikant 16:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:39 ... exchange your status at the bank.

Naval Ravikant 16:41 Exactly. Yeah, it's, it's, it's vague and it's fuzzy. Now you see people get rich, they have money, what do they want? They want status. So, they go to Hollywood, start starring in movies, they donate to non-profits. They go to Cannes or Davos or what have you-

Chris Williamson 16:54 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 16:54 ... um, and they start trying to trade the money for status. So, you know, people always want what they don't have, uh, and we are evolutionarily hardwired for status because, as I said, wealth creation didn't really exist until the agricultural revolution, uh, when you could store grain, and then the industrial revolution took it to another level, and now the information age has taken it to yet another level.

Chris Williamson 17:12 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 17:13 But there's never been an easier time to make money. Yes, it's still hard, but there's never been an easier time to create wealth because there's so much leverage out there. There's so much opportunity. You still have to go find it. It's not easy. It's not gonna fall in your lap, and you have to learn something and know something and do something interesting. But nevertheless, it's possible to many more people. Few hundred years ago, you were born a serf, you were gonna die a serf. There was almost no way out of that. Th- that's changed. And so I would argue that you're better off focusing on wealth games and status games. If you're trying to, um, build up, for example, your following on a social network and get famous and then get rich off of being famous, that's a much harder path than getting rich first.

Chris Williamson 17:51 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 17:52 Um, and then go for your fame afterwards would be my advice.

Chris Williamson 17:55 Well, a lot of people do that, as you said. It's funny how, uh, people who have achieved such a level of wealth that you don't think, why do you need the status, given that most people use status to then try and cash in to achieve wealth. If you've achieved fucking money already, if you're post-money or, uh, asset heavy, as it's known, um, why are you trying to go in the other direction? What, as you said, because we've got-

Naval Ravikant 18:17 It's hardwired.

Chris Williamson 18:17 ... we've got an illustrious history-

Naval Ravikant 18:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:19 ... biologically of wanting status, and wealth is kind of...... novel.

Naval Ravikant 18:24 It's new. It's new. Wealth is, uh, something that you have to understand more intellectually. Yeah, there's a physical component, more food, more survival, but, uh, to truly understand the effects and the powers and the abilities and limitations, uh, and the advantages and disadvantages of wealth, you have to use your neocortex a lot more.

Chris Williamson 18:41 Does that mean, uh-

Naval Ravikant 18:42 It's not limbic.

Chris Williamson 18:43 ... the reason to play the game is to win the game and be done with it is harder to win and be done with for status than it is for wealth?

Naval Ravikant 18:50 That's a good observation. I hadn't thought that through, but you're right. Yeah. I think that's right. I think you, people always want more status, uh, but I think you can be satisfied at a certain level of wealth.

Chris Williamson 18:58 Whereas while, uh, you always have this sort of sense, and this is what leaderboards are, right? This is the- the-

Naval Ravikant 19:05 Right. Leaderboards are infinite.

Chris Williamson 19:05 ... iTunes billboard charts.

Naval Ravikant 19:06 That's right.

Chris Williamson 19:07 And it is zero sum.

Naval Ravikant 19:08 Right.

Chris Williamson 19:09 And it is, I guess, you know, the Forbes richest people on the planet feeling like that.

Naval Ravikant 19:14 Yeah. That one's harder to climb the ladder on.

Chris Williamson 19:16 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 19:16 But, uh, the fact that, for example, iTunes and YouTube can put you in competition against your contemporaries every single day-

Chris Williamson 19:23 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 19:23 ... and make you go up and down and show you likes and comments and ratings and subscribers and so on.

Chris Williamson 19:26 This is how much you fell, this is how much you are, yeah.

Naval Ravikant 19:28 Exactly. They, they keep you running on that treadmill forever.

Chris Williamson 19:31 Jimmy Carr has this cool idea where he says trajectory is more important than position.

Naval Ravikant 19:35 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:35 So if you are number 101 in the world, but last year you were number 200, versus you're number two in the world, but last year you were number one, there is this sense of e- the deceleration-

Naval Ravikant 19:47 Right.

Chris Williamson 19:47 ... is very, very tangible. And, um, it's like-

Naval Ravikant 19:50 Yeah. Again, it goes back to evolution. You know, something that is bleeding eventually dies, (laughs) unless you stop the bleeding. So-

Chris Williamson 19:55 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 19:55 ... you're, you're hardwired not to lose what you have, and because we evolved in conditions where we're so close to just not surviving, uh, you don't want to give anything up. It's hardwired into us to not give anything up.

Chris Williamson 20:07 So you grip tightly?

Naval Ravikant 20:08 That's right.

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Chris Williamson 21:02 The worst outcome in the world is not having self-esteem. Why?

Naval Ravikant 21:07 Yeah, it's a tough one. Uh, I- I- I- I look at the people, and I don't want to offend anybody, but I look at the people who don't like themselves, and that's the toughest slot, because they're always wrestling with themselves. And it's hard enough to face the outside world, um, and no one's going to like you more than you like yourself. So if you're struggling with yourself, then the outside world becomes an insurmountable challenge. And it's hard to say why people have low self-esteem, it might be genetic, it might just be circumstantial. A lot of times I think it's 'cause they just weren't unconditionally loved as a child, and that sort of seeps in at a deep core level. Um, but self-esteem issues can be the most limiting. Uh, one interesting thought is that, you know, to some extent, self-esteem is a reputation you have with yourself. Um, you're watching yourself at all times, you know what you're doing, and you have your own moral code. Everyone has a different moral code. But if you don't live up to your own moral code, the same code that you hold others to, uh, it will damage your self-esteem. So perhaps one way to build up your self-esteem is to live up to your own code very rigorously. Have one and then live up to it. Uh, another way to raise your self-esteem might be to do things for others. Uh, if I look back on my life and, you know, what are the moments that I'm actually proud of? There's very far and few between, and it's not that often, and it's not the things you would expect. It's not the material success, it's not having learned this thing or that, it's when I made a sacrifice for somebody or something that I loved. And, uh, that's when I'm actually ironically most proud. Now, that's through an explicit mental exercise, but I'll bet you at some level I'm recording that implicitly. So that tells me that even if I am not being loved, then the way to create love is to give love, to- to express love through sacrifice and through duty. And so I think doing things like that can build up your self-esteem really fast.

Chris Williamson 22:55 It's interesting when you talk about sacrifice, because a lot of the time people say, "Well, I sacrificed so much for my job." It's like, yeah, but that was you sacrificing something that you wanted less for something that you wanted more, as opposed to genuinely taking some sort of cost. And, uh, yeah, I wonder whether if self-esteem is you adhering to your internal, uh, uh, your- your actions and your values aligning, um, even when it's difficult or perhaps even more so when it's difficult, I wonder whether there is a price that people who are more introspective, high integrity pay, because you think, well, you've got this, uh, heavier set of overheads that you need to pay in some way.

Naval Ravikant 23:37 Well, if being ethical were profitable, everybody would do it, right?

Chris Williamson 23:40 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 23:40 (laughs) So, uh, y- at some level, it does involve a sacrifice. Uh, but that sacrifice can also be thought of as you're thinking for the long term rather than the short term. Um, for example, the virtues are the set of, uh-... a, a virtue's a set of beliefs that if everybody in society followed them as individuals, it would lead to win-win outcomes for everybody. So if I am honest and you are honest, then we can do business more easily, we can interact more easily 'cause we can trust each other. So even though there might be a few liars in the system, as long as there aren't too many liars and too many cheaters, uh, a high trust society where everybody's honest is better off. And I think a lot of the virtues work this way, right? If I don't go around sleeping with your wife and you don't sleep with mine, and you know, if I don't take all the food that's at the table first and so on, then we all get along better and we can play win-win games. Uh, in game theory, the most famous game is Prisoner's Dilemma but that's all about everybody cheating in the Nash equilibrium, the stable equilibrium there is everybody cheats. And your for- the only way you can be, you can play a win-win game is if you have long-term iterated moves. But that's not actually the most common game played in society. The most common game played is one called a stag's hunt, where if we cooperate, we can bring down a big stag and both have big dinners, but if we don't cooperate then we have to go hunt, like, rabbits and we each have small dinners.

Chris Williamson 24:54 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 24:54 So most of, uh ... And, and that game has two stable equilibriums and one could be where we're both hunting the rabbit and one could be where we're hunting the stag. So the high trust society is a more- most- more virtuous society where I can trust you to come hunt the stag with me and show up on time and do the work and divide it up properly. So you want to live in a system where everybody has their own set of virtues and follows them and then we all win. S- but, I would argue, you don't need to do that for sacrifice, you don't need to do that for other people. You can do it just purely for yourself. You will have higher self-esteem. You will attract other high virtue people in the system.

Chris Williamson 25:29 Would I go on a stag hunt with me?

Naval Ravikant 25:31 Correct. Yeah, that's right, and if you're the kind of person, if you're the kind of person who long term signals ethics and virtues then you'll attract other people who's- are ethical and virtuous. Whereas if you are a shark you will eventually find yourself swimming entirely amongst sharks and that's an unpleasant existence. But again, this goes back to the equivalent of the marshmallow test. And by the way, the marshmallow test does not replicate to fake, fake science. Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:54 I saw the ego, ego replication crisis hard recently.

Naval Ravikant 25:58 Right. But it is about trading off the short term for the long term, uh, and so I think for a lot of these so-called virtues there are long term selfish reasons to be virtuous.

Chris Williamson 26:08 Mm. Yeah, uh ... Did you deal with self-doubt in the past? Is that something that was a hurdle for you to overcome?

Naval Ravikant 26:17 Yes and no. I think I, I dealt with self-doubt in the sense that, "Oh, I don't know what I'm doing and I need to figure it out," um, but I didn't doubt myself in the way of somebody else knows better than me for me or that, you know, I'm an idiot or I'm not worthwhile or anything that... I, I guess I had the benefit of I grew up with a lot of love. Like, the people around me loved me unconditionally and so that just gave me a lot of confidence. Uh, not the kind of confidence that would say, "I have the answer-"

Chris Williamson 26:45 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 26:45 ... but the kind of confidence that, "I will figure it out and I know what I want," or, uh, "Only I am a good arbiter of what I want."

Chris Williamson 26:53 Yeah, that level of self-belief, I suppose, allows you to determine what is it that matters to me. My self-esteem, uh, d- should I chase this thing or not? I can make a fair judgment on that as opposed to being so swayed. But I ... it's such a good point about even if you think you're not consciously logging the stuff that you're doing, there is some that's in the back of your mind. Was it the daemon? Is that what the, uh, ancient Greeks or something used to talk about?

Naval Ravikant 27:17 Yeah. The, the ... Yeah, also in computer science, like, there's a concept of a daemon which is a, uh, a program that's always running in the background. You can't see it.

Chris Williamson 27:26 Okay.

Naval Ravikant 27:26 Um, but yeah, it probably comes from the ancient Greek daemon.

Chris Williamson 27:29 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 27:30 Uh, but yeah, the, I, what you know that you don't even know you know (laughs) is far greater than what you know you know, right?

Chris Williamson 27:38 All right.

Naval Ravikant 27:38 You can't even articulate most of the things you know. There are feelings you have that have no words for them. There are thoughts you have that are felt within the body or subconsciously that you never articulate to yourself. You don't really ... You can't articulate the rules of grammar, yet you exercise them effortlessly when you speak. So I, I would argue that your implicit knowledge and your knowledge that is unknown to yourself is far greater than the knowledge you can articulate and that you can communicate. And ... So at some level you're always watching yourself. That's what your consciousness is, right? It's the thing that's watching everything including your mind, including your body.

Chris Williamson 28:11 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 28:12 So if you want to, uh, have high self-esteem, then earn your own self-respect.

Chris Williamson 28:18 Mm. I had this idea, the internal golden rule. So the golden rule says treat others the way that-

Naval Ravikant 28:24 Mm.

Chris Williamson 28:24 ... you should be treated, you want to be treated. The internal golden rule says treat yourself like others should have treated you.

Naval Ravikant 28:29 Mm.

Chris Williamson 28:30 And it was a, a riposte to maybe people that didn't grow up with unconditional love-

Naval Ravikant 28:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:37 ... in that way.

Naval Ravikant 28:38 On the love thing, one of the interesting things about love is you can try to remember the feeling of being loved. So go back to when someone was in love with you or someone did love you and, like, really remember that feeling. Like, really sit with it and try to recreate it within yourself. And then go to the feeling of you loving someone and when you were in love. And I'm not even talking about romantic love necessarily, so be a little careful there. I'm talking more about, like, love for a, uh-

Chris Williamson 29:05 Can, can ... sometimes get complex if you're talking about past romantic love.

Naval Ravikant 29:07 Right, a sibling or a child or something like that, or, or a parent. And, uh, think about when you felt love towards someone or something. And now, which is better? And I would argue that the feeling of being in love is actually more exhilarating than the feeling of being loved. Being loved is a little cloying. It's a little too sweet. You kind of want to push the person away. It's a little embarrassing and you know that if that person is too much into it that you feel constrained. On the other hand, the feeling of being in love is very expansive. It's very open. It actually-

Chris Williamson 29:38 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 29:38 ... makes you a better version of yourself. It makes you want to be a better person. And so you can create love any time you want. It's just that craving to receive

Naval Ravikant 29:46 it that's the problem.

Chris Williamson 29:47 The most expensive trait is pride. How come?

Naval Ravikant 29:50 Oh, that was a recent one. Uh, I, I tweeted that just because I think that w-Uh, pride is the enemy of learning. So when I look at my friends and colleagues, the ones who are still stuck in the past and have grown the least are the ones who were the proudest, because they sort of feel like they already had the answers, and so they don't want to correct themselves publicly. And so this goes back to the fame conversation. You get locked into something you said, it made you famous, you're known for that, and now you want to pivot or change.

Chris Williamson 30:18 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 30:18 So pride prevents you from saying, "I'm wrong." It prevents you from starting over.

Chris Williamson 30:21 What's, what's pride in this, uh, context here?

Naval Ravikant 30:23 It could be as simple as you're trading stocks and then you don't want to admit you were wrong, so you hang onto a lousy trade. Uh, it could be that you, uh, made a decision to, uh, you know, marry someone or move somewhere or enter a profession and it doesn't work out, and then you don't want to admit that you were wrong, so you get stuck in it. Uh, it's mostly about getting trapped in local maxima, as opposed-

Chris Williamson 30:43 Okay.

Naval Ravikant 30:43 ... to going back down and climbing up the mountain again.

Chris Williamson 30:45 Mm-hmm. And that's why it's an expensive trade, because you continue to need to repay it in one form or another.

Naval Ravikant 30:50 Yeah. You're, you're just stuck at a suboptimal point. Uh, it's gonna cost you money. It's gonna cost you success.

Chris Williamson 30:56 And time?

Naval Ravikant 30:56 And time. Uh, the great artists always have this ability to start over, whether it's Paul Simon or Madonna or U2, and I'm dating myself a little bit.

Chris Williamson 31:05 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 31:05 Um, but even the great entrepreneurs, they're just always willing to start over. Uh, I'm always struck by the Elon Musk story where, you know, he, uh, he did PayPal as x.com originally, actually was his, his, uh, financial institution that got merged into PayPal. Uh-

Chris Williamson 31:19 Well, it's good that you've got the domain. You know what I mean?

Naval Ravikant 31:21 Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Williamson 31:21 I'll j- I'll just-

Naval Ravikant 31:22 Noe he's, he's-

Chris Williamson 31:22 ... I'll park that. I'll hold onto it.

Naval Ravikant 31:23 ... he's, he's consistent. He's been using it for quite a while.

Chris Williamson 31:25 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 31:25 Um, and he said something like along the lines of, uh, "I made $200 million from the sale of PayPal. I put $100 million into SpaceX, 80 million into Tesla, 20 into SolarCity, and I had to borrow money for rent." (laughs) Right? This guy is a perennial risk-taker. He's always willing to start over. He doesn't have any pride about being seen as successful or being seen as a failure. He's willing to put it all on the line.

Chris Williamson 31:45 Go back himself again each time.

Naval Ravikant 31:47 Back himself again each time. But g- the key thing is, he's always willing to start over, right? Even now when he's sort of made his, his new startup is a USA, right? He's basically trying to fix it like he would fix one of his startups. And I think that is a willingness to look like a fool, and that is a willingness to start over, and a lot of people just don't have that. They become-

Chris Williamson 32:08 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 32:08 ... successful or they become rich or they become famous, and that's it. They're stuck. They don't want to go back to zero. And creating anything great requires zero to one, and that means you go back to zero, and that's really painful and hard to

Naval Ravikant 32:19 do.

Chris Williamson 32:20 Talking about risk, something I've been thinking about a lot to do with you, any moment when you're not having a good time, when you're not really happy, you're not doing anyone any favors. I think lots of people have become unusually familiar with suffering silently in that sort of a way, not having a high bar for your expectation for quality of life, uh-

Naval Ravikant 32:46 Yeah, a lot of it is just you're memeing yourself into a bad outcome because you think that somehow suffering is glorious or that it makes you a better person, or, uh, you know, my old quip was, "If you're so smart, why aren't you happy? Why can't you figure that one out?"

Chris Williamson 32:59 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 33:00 Um, the reality is, you can be smart and happy. There are plenty of people in human history who were smart and happy. Uh, and I think it just starts with saying, "Yeah, you know what? I'm, I'm gonna be happy." There was a guy that I met in Thailand a long time ago, and, uh, he used to work for Tony Robbins. Uh, you know, he had a great attitude. And, uh, y- we were sitting around and he said, you know, uh, y- he said, "I realized one day that someone out there had to be the happiest person in the world. Like, they just ha- that person just has to exist." He said, "Why not me? I'll take on that burden. I'll be that guy." And (laughs) I heard that and I was like, "Wow, that's pretty good. That's a good frame," right?

Chris Williamson 33:34 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 33:35 He knew how to reframe things. And so I think a lot of happiness is just a choice, uh, in the sense that you m- first you just identify yourself as, "Actually, I'm gonna be a person that's gonna be happy. I'm gonna figure it out." And you just figure it out along the way. You're not gonna lose your other predilections. You're not gonna lose your ambition or your desire for success. I think a lot of people have this fear that, "Oh, if I'm happy, then I won't want to be successful." No, you'll just want to do things that are more aligned with the happy version of you, and you'll be successful at those things. And believe me, the happy version of you is not gonna look back at the unhappy version and say, "Oh, man. That o- that guy was gonna be more successful." Exactly.

Chris Williamson 34:07 "Had more success. I wish that I was him."

Naval Ravikant 34:08 You're actually trying to be successful so you'll be happy.

Chris Williamson 34:11 Oh, dude, you have-

Naval Ravikant 34:11 That's the whole point. You've gotten it backwards.

Chris Williamson 34:13 You, you unlocked one of my trap cards. Um, one of my favorite insights is that we sacrifice the thing we want for the thing that's supposed to get it. So we sacrifice happiness in order to be successful, so that when we're finally sufficiently successful, we can actually be happy. And if you have some sort of simultaneous equation and you just sort of stripped success off from both sides.

Naval Ravikant 34:33 The, uh ... At least in my own life, I have not found there to be a trade-off. If anything, I have found that the happier I get, the more I am going to do the things that I'm good at and aligned with, and that will make me even happier. And so I actually end up more successful, not less.

Chris Williamson 34:49 The aligned with thing is interesting. Uh, I'm gonna try and put this across as delicately as I can. I would say from the bit of time that we've spent together, you have a really interesting trait of holistic selfishness. Uh, you're sort of prepared to put yourself first. Um, you seem largely unfazed by saying or doing things that mer- might result in other people feeling a little bit awkward if it's truthful for you. Uh, it's like, unapologetically self-prioritizing, I guess.

Naval Ravikant 35:19 Yeah, I think everybody is. Uh, maybe unapologetic is the part that's, uh, that's relatively, uh, rare. But, uh, I think everybody puts themselves first. That's just human nature. You're, you're here because you survive. You're a separate organism.

Chris Williamson 35:31 That's interesting.

Naval Ravikant 35:32 So-

Chris Williamson 35:32 I, um, maybe, but-

Naval Ravikant 35:33 I know we like to virtue signal and pretend we're doing it for each other, but-

Chris Williamson 35:36 W- how many, how many times does somebody say, "Yeah, of course, I'd love to come to the wedding"? And they're like, "I don't want to be at the fucking wedding."

Naval Ravikant 35:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 35:41 How many times does someone say, "How are you doing today?"

Naval Ravikant 35:42 I don't go to weddings.

Chris Williamson 35:42 And they don't tell you? How many-

Naval Ravikant 35:44 I don't, I don't go to weddings.

Chris Williamson 35:44 Uh, but this is my point.

Naval Ravikant 35:45 (laughs) Right.

Chris Williamson 35:46 So I don't think you're necessarily right with that. I think that people do ... I don't think they put themselves first. I sometimes think that they, they compromise what it is that they want in order to appease-

Naval Ravikant 35:56 Mm.

Chris Williamson 35:56 ... socially what's in front of them.

Naval Ravikant 35:59 Yeah, I just view it as your waste- everyone's wasting their time on it. Um, don't do something you don't want to do. Why, why are you wasting your time? There's so little time on this earth. (laughs) Life goes fast. What is it, 4,000 weeks that's your lifespan? Um, and, and yes, we hear that, but we don't remember it. But, uh, I guess I'm keenly aware of how little time I have, so I'm just not gonna waste it.

Chris Williamson 36:20 How have you got more comfortable at, um, being the unapologetic self-prioritizer-

Naval Ravikant 36:28 Yeah, I've gotten-

Chris Williamson 36:28 ... in that way?

Naval Ravikant 36:28 ... I've gotten utterly more and more ruthless on it. Ma- mainly it's that I see or hear people's freedom, and then that liberates me further. So I read a, uh, I read a blog post by, uh, P Mark A., AKA Marc Andreessen, where he said, "Don't keep a schedule," and I took that to heart. So I deleted my calendar, and I don't keep a schedule (laughs) . I try to remember it all in my head. If I can't remember it, I'm not gonna add it to my schedule.

Chris Williamson 36:49 I'm glad you got here on time.

Naval Ravikant 36:51 Yeah, exactly. Um, I hate to look things up at the last minute. Uh, so but, uh, ironically, I don't even know if Mark himself follows that (laughs) , but he made the correct point. Uh, I read a little story about Jack Dorsey doing all his business off his, uh, iPhone and iPad and not even going into a Mac, and I said, "Okay, I want to do that, so I'm gonna operate through text messaging," and I put up my nasty email-

Chris Williamson 37:11 Does that feel like more freedom?

Naval Ravikant 37:13 It does, yeah, 'cause you're on the go. Um, so I have a nasty email auto-responder that says I don't check email and don't text me either (laughs) , right? If you need to find me, you'll find me. Obviously, some of this is a luxury of success, but some of these habits I adopted long before, actually. The hostile email auto-responder started a long time ago.

Chris Williamson 37:30 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 37:30 Um, I used to own the domain. IGletitgo-

Chris Williamson 37:32 Don'tdocoffee.com.

Naval Ravikant 37:33 ... idontdocoffee.com. I used to reply from that email (laughs) , uh, just so people would get the point. But I stopped being rude about it, and now I just ghost, I just disappear. Um, my wife knows not to ever, uh, book or schedule me for anything. Uh, I'm not expected-

Chris Williamson 37:48 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 37:48 I'm not expected to go to couples dinners. I'm not expected to go to birthdays. I'm not expected to go to weddings. If somebody tries to rope her into having me show up, she says, "He makes his own decisions. You gotta ask him directly." And vice versa.

Chris Williamson 37:59 Well, what about surr- well, are, are you not killing serendipity in a way, though? Do, do you-

Naval Ravikant 38:01 No, no, I'm freeing up all my time, so my entire life is serendipity. I get to interact with whoever I want, whenever I want, wherever I want.

Chris Williamson 38:08 So you'll hear the invite but make the decision? Because if you're, if there's fewer things incoming-

Naval Ravikant 38:13 I don't commit to-

Chris Williamson 38:13 ... you're assuming that you know what's best for you all the time.

Naval Ravikant 38:14 I don't commit to anything in the future. So I'll say, okay, if that thing is interesting, I'll see if I can get it that day when I'm in the mood.

Chris Williamson 38:21 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 38:21 But there's nothing worse than something coming up that your past self committed you to-

Chris Williamson 38:26 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 38:26 ... that your present self doesn't want to do.

Chris Williamson 38:27 Oh, goddamn it, past Naval.

Naval Ravikant 38:28 And then if it, yeah, and then it destroys your entire calendar. Uh, it destroys your, your day because there's like, oh, this one-hour slot which is sitting like a turd on my calendar-

Chris Williamson 38:36 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 38:36 ... that I have to, like, schedule my whole day around. I can't do anything the 20 minutes before, the 20 minutes afterwards.

Chris Williamson 38:41 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 38:41 Even for phone calls, if someone wants to do a phone call, I say, "Okay, just text me when you're free. I'll text you when I'm free, and we'll just do it on the fly." It's a much better way of living than this overly scheduled, uh, you know, cal.com or iCal, whatever, like slots.

Chris Williamson 38:52 What was that, the, uh, the over-scheduled life is not worth living?

Naval Ravikant 38:55 It's not. I think it's a terrible way to live life. That's not how we evolve. It's not how we grew up. Um, it's not how, how we were as children, hopefully, uh, unless you have a helicopter parent or a tiger mom.

Chris Williamson 39:05 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 39:05 Um, your natural order is freedom. Uh, I had a friend who, uh, said to me once, you know, uh, "I never want to have to be at a specific place at a specific time." And I was like, "Oh my God, that's freedom." When I heard that, that changed my life right there.

Chris Williamson 39:20 Are you still, uh, arm clo- uh, alarm clock-less?

Naval Ravikant 39:23 Yes, I'm alarm clock-less. Today, I did set my alarm clock (laughs) just so I wouldn't miss this.

Chris Williamson 39:27 Very important, yeah, if you were still-

Naval Ravikant 39:28 But, but just so you know, I set the alarm clock for 11:00 AM in case I was stricken with the flu and slept in.

Chris Williamson 39:33 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 39:33 I wasn't gonna set my alarm clock for 8:00 AM or 9:00 AM, and sure enough, I got up many hours before that.

Chris Williamson 39:38 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 39:39 Um, but it was sort of a backup emergency alarm. In fact, sometimes when it's something that I need to do, I don't want to look at a calendar, so I'll just set an alarm for it.

Chris Williamson 39:49 Hmm. Just sitting, sink a little bit more into that, like, kind of like that "fuck you" energy, that self-prioritizing energy, because I think people rationally love the idea of this. I'm gonna do what only I want to do, uh, even if they've got the level of freedom.

Naval Ravikant 40:04 It's not "fuck you" energy in the sense that I think everyone should live their life that way to the greatest extent possible. Obviously, we have our requirements around work and obligations that are genuinely important to us. But don't fritter away your life on randomly scheduled things and on things that aren't important, don't matter, and events and weddings and, you know, tedious dinners with tedious people that you don't want to go to. To the extent you can bring freedom into your life, optimize for that. You'll actually be more productive. You won't just be happier and more free. You will be more productive because then you can focus on what is in front of you, whatever the biggest problem of that day. When I wake up in the morning, uh, the first four hours are when I have the most energy, and that's when I wanna solve all the hard problems. And the next four hours are when I kind of want to, you know, do some more outdoorsy activities, or I want to work out, or maybe I can, you know, have some meetings, but I'll try to do those last second based on whatever the day's priorities demand. The last four hours, I kind of want to wind down. I want to hang out with the kids, and I want to play games or read a book or something like that. So having that flexibility and freedom is really important so you can just put whatever is most needed into the slot at that moment. Uh, and instead, if I have, like, a meeting at 2:00 PM, and then I have to like get a thing and some emails done, I put that off till 6:00 PM and I'm rushing, I'm not gonna be productive. I'm not gonna be, uh-

Chris Williamson 41:26 You're certainly not free.

Naval Ravikant 41:27 Yeah, I'm not, I'm definitely not free. But also, uh, another thing that I really believe is that inspiration is perishable. Act on it immediately. So when you're inspired to do something, do that thing. If I'm inspired to write a blog post, I want to do it at that moment. If I'm inspired to send a tweet, I want to do it at that moment. If I'm inspired to solve a problem, I want to do it at that moment. If I'm inspired to read a book, I want to read it right then. If I'm inspired to solve a problem, I'll solve it right there. If I want to learn something, uh, uh, I, I do it at the moment of curiosity. The moment the curiosity arrives, I go learn that thing immediately. I download the book, I get on Google, I get on ChatGPT, whatever. I will figure that thing out on the spot, and that's when the learning happens. It doesn't happen 'cause I've scheduled time, because I've set an hour aside, because when that time arrives, I might be in a different mood. I might just want to do something different. So I think that spontaneity is really important. You're going to learn best when you're having fun, when you generally are enjoying the process, not when you're forced to sit there and do it. How much do you remember from school? You know, you were forced to learn geography, history, mathematics on this schedule, at this time, according to this person. Didn't happen. All the stuff that sticks with you is you learned it when you wanted to, when you genuinely had the desire.And that freedom, that ability to act on something the moment you want to is so liberating that, uh, most of us go through our lives with very, very little tastes of that.

Chris Williamson 42:40 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 42:40 If you live your entire life that way, that is a recipe for happiness.

Chris Williamson 42:44 It feels like efficiency that, that you have the-

Naval Ravikant 42:47 It's efficient also.

Chris Williamson 42:48 ... you have the inspiration that is going to be the most frictionless time to ever do that particular task. So, I've had the inspiration to do that. I'll put that off until a time when I no longer really want to do it-

Naval Ravikant 42:58 Does not work.

Chris Williamson 42:58 ... quite so much. And while I do want to do that thing, I'll do something else that I needed to do-

Naval Ravikant 43:01 Right.

Chris Williamson 43:01 ... because it's on the schedule.

Naval Ravikant 43:02 It, it does not work. Procrastination is 'cause you don't wanna do that thing right now. You wanna do something else. Go do that something else. I reject this frame that efficiency and productivity and success are counter to happiness and freedom. They actually go together.

Chris Williamson 43:16 How so?

Naval Ravikant 43:18 The happier you are, the more you can sustain doing something, the more likely you're gonna do something that will in turn make you even happier, and you'll continue to do it, and you'll outwork everybody else. The more free you are, the better you can allocate your time, and the less you're caught up in a web of obligations and commitments, and the more you can focus on the task at hand.

Chris Williamson 43:34 In other news, this episode is brought to you by Function. Staying on top of your health requires more than just an annual physical, which is why I partnered with Function. They run lab tests twice a year that track over 100 biomarkers and monitor for early signs of thousands of diseases. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one, which is five times more data than you get from an annual physical. You receive insights from a team of expert physicians who provide a detailed written clinician summary of all their observations and then phone consultations for any critical findings. Getting these lab tests done would usually cost thousands, but with Function, it is only $499. And right now, you can get the exact same blood panels that I get and bypass their waitlist by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's functionhealth.com/modernwisdom.

Chris Williamson 44:22 This is related to another insight of yours. The less you want something, the less you're thinking about it, the less you're obsessing over it, the more you're going to do it in a natural way, the more you're going to do it for yourself. You're going to do it in a way that you're good at and you're going to stick with it. The people around you will see the quality of your work is higher. This seems like a difficult tension to navigate because an obsessive attention to detail is a competitive advantage of your work as well. So you have these two things sort of conflicting with each other.

Naval Ravikant 44:49 No one is going to beat you at being you. If it, so, uh, one of the things I like to say is like, find what feels like play to you but looks like work to others. So it looks like work to them, but to you it feels like play. It's not work. So you're gonna out-compete them because you're doing it effortlessly. You're doing it for fun. They're doing it for work. They're doing it for some byproduct. To you, it's art, it's beauty, it's joy, it's, it's flow, it's fulfilling. Uh, you must enjoy podcasting. If you didn't, you wouldn't be good at it. You would have lost-

Chris Williamson 45:21 I wouldn't have done-

Naval Ravikant 45:21 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 45:21 ... 900 episodes either. Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 45:22 Right. If you would, you w- i- i- if, if you decided that the right way to get ahead in life was to go write books, you would, nobody would have heard of you. Chris Williamson's book would be a complete flop. That's not who you are. You're a podcaster. You enjoy talking to people. You enjoy interviewing them. The more you do things that are natural to you, the less competition you have. You escape competition through authenticity, uh, by being your own self. If I had to summarize how to be successful in life in two words, I would just say productize yourself. That's it. Just figure out what it is that you naturally do that the world might want that you can scale up and turn into a product, and it'll be e- it'll eventually be effortless for you. Yes, there's always work required, but it won't even feel like work to you. It'll feel like play to you. And modern society gives us that opportunity. You know, if you were, 2,000 years ago, you're born on a farm, your choices are very limited (laughs) , right? You're gonna do stuff on that farm. Now you can literally wake up and you can move to a different city. You can switch careers. You can switch jobs. You can change the people that you're with. Uh, you know, you can change so many things about who you are and who you're with and what you're doing that there is infinite opportunity out there for you, literally infinite. And so it's much better to treat this like a search function to find the people who need you the most, to find the work that needs you the most, to find the place you're best suited to be at, and it's worthwhile to spend time in that exploration before diving into exploitation. The biggest mistake in a world with so many choices is premature commitment. If you prematurely commit to being a lawyer or a doctor and now you've got like, you know, five years invested into that, you might have just completely missed. You might just end up in the wrong profession, the wrong place, the wrong people for 30 years of your life grinding away. And yes, the best time to figure that out was before, but the second-best time is now.

Chris Williamson 47:11 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 47:11 So just change it.

Chris Williamson 47:12 Hmm, and also presumably kill things that aren't working very quickly.

Naval Ravikant 47:19 By default, you should kill everything (laughs) . You know, if you can't decide, the answer is no. Uh, and most things you should just be saying no to. The, part of my keeping my calendar free is just by default saying no to everything. Do I want to create a calendar just to add your event (laughs) , right, or to add your need or your desire? One of the other things about, uh, you know, look, early on in life, you're looking for opportunities, so you're saying yes to everything, and that is a phase that you go through. That is the exploration phase. Later, when you found the thing you wanna work on, you're in the exploitation phase. You have to say no to everything by default and if you- Don't say no to everything by default, if you have to even explicitly go out of your way to say no to something, that will take up time. Uh, for example, you know, there, there are a lot of people out there who are into hustle culture and, uh, and a big piece of hustle culture is like, well, you're not gonna get something if you don't ask for it, so they'll hustle people. They'll always be sending you requests, messages.

Chris Williamson 48:10 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 48:10 Yeah, this is a famous person problem, but I have it, and people are always asking me for things and I kind of squirm when I get these messages and I'm sure you get these too, text messages, emails saying, "Hey, Chris, my friend so-and-so should really be on your podcast," or, "You should come to my event. You should write a foreword for my book." And you kind of squirm when you get this, right? And you have to figure out how to say no, and one of the things I learned along the way is that if you wouldn't ask somebody else to do it and then you get that request yourself, you can just dismiss it. You don't have to respond.You don't, you don't even let y- let it enter your brain. You have to be able to delete emails and text messages without flinching if you wanna scale.

Chris Williamson 48:44 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 48:44 And scaling is very important. Scaling your time is really important. Every interruption will take you out of flow, so the only way you can remain in flow is if you get either very good at ignoring these things by default or closing yourself off like a hermit, like our mutual friend Tim Ferriss does-

Chris Williamson 48:58 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 48:59 ... uh, or you just become emotionally capable of not registering these as something that causes turbulence inside of you.

Chris Williamson 49:08 W- that not registering it emotionally thing, is that a...?

Naval Ravikant 49:12 It's fundamental. It's so fundamental to so many things in life.

Chris Williamson 49:15 Okay. Can we dig into that a little bit? Is it, 'cause again, I've only seen you as you, right? I didn't know you 20 years ago. I didn't know you as a child. Um, so I've only seen you with this holistic selfishness, the in- integrated self-prioritization, whatever we ca- I don't know what we called it.

Naval Ravikant 49:31 Yeah. Selfish is fine. I'll take selfish. I'm selfish.

Chris Williamson 49:34 Holistic.

Naval Ravikant 49:34 I'm a very selfish person. Don't contact me. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 49:36 (laughs) Uh, yeah, th- that emotional reaction-

Naval Ravikant 49:39 What everybody is.

Chris Williamson 49:40 ... I, I also get the sense too that maybe people have lived obligation life for so long that they actually kinda struggle to tap into what it is that they want. They've hidden their wants and their desires and their needs and they've deprioritized themselves so much for so long, they go, "What do I want, actually? What d- what is it, do I want to go to this thing or not? Because all I've done is be fucking puppeted, right? I've been marionetted by other people's desires for so, so, so long, I can't even tap into that anymore. And saying no feels like a, a war crime."

Naval Ravikant 50:12 So, so I think it's really good to be able to view your own mind and your own thoughts objectively, and that is the big benefit of meditation. It creates a small gap between your conscious observation, self, and your mind, and that lets you then look at your thoughts and evaluate them, a little bit like, uh, you would a third party's statements. And, uh, if you just take your mind to be you and they're integrated and one and the same at all times and you're reacting from the mind, then you're not even gonna question things that come into your mind. Anything that comes in that creates a reaction will immediately create a reaction. But if you can observe your thoughts a little bit, and not in some woo-woo way, but you can even just do it through therapy, you can do it through journaling, you can do it any way you like.

Chris Williamson 50:53 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 50:53 You can just take long walks. You don't have to meditate and do lotus position. Uh, all that is unnecessary. But if you can observe your own thoughts and view them a little objectively, then you can start being, uh, a little more choosy, a little more critical, and you can realize that there are no problems in the real world other than maybe things that inflict pain on your body. Everything else has to become a problem in your mind first. It, you have to view it and interpret it and create a narrative that it is a problem before it becomes a problem. And then you realize that a lot of your emotional energy is spent on reacting to things that your mind is automatically saying are problems. Uh, and you don't need all those problems. Do you really need that many problems in your life?

Chris Williamson 51:37 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 51:37 Again, I would say try to focus on just one overarching problem and then go solve that problem. It's like, if you want to be successful, define success very concretely, focus on that, and everything else, when it enters your mind it becomes a problem, whether it's a judgment about the girl walking down the street or the car that just cut in front of you or whether it's, like, you know, this, your accountant did this stupid thing. Like, yes, it's gonna trigger you, but observe for a moment that, like, "It's triggering me. I've created a problem. Do I really wanna have this problem right now? Do I wanna spend the energy on this problem or do I want that going somewhere else?"

Chris Williamson 52:09 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 52:09 And it d- it doesn't have to be that overt. You don't have to m- the mind mud wrestling with itself is also a problem.

Chris Williamson 52:14 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 52:14 'Cause it loves to do that.

Chris Williamson 52:15 I have, my problems have got problems, and I have a real problem-

Naval Ravikant 52:18 Right.

Chris Williamson 52:18 ... about fixing my problems.

Naval Ravikant 52:19 Yeah, exactly. It's a, you just, i- i-

Chris Williamson 52:21 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 52:21 ... you're gonna be much happier and much more focused. Again, I think happiness and focus and success can kind of complement each other. You're gonna have much more energy. Just think about as mental energy, you know, much more mental energy to focus on the actual problems you want to solve if you don't start unconsciously, subconsciously, reactively picking up problems everywhere. So before anything can be a problem that takes up your emotional energy, you have to accept it as a problem. You can be choosy about your problems. And I'm not saying I'm perfect in that regard-

Chris Williamson 52:53 Hm.

Naval Ravikant 52:53 ... but I think I'm better than I used to be.

Chris Williamson 52:55 Well, lots of people are addicted to solving problems, right? So much so that sometimes people create problems when we don't have any simply so that we can solve them.

Naval Ravikant 53:03 We have that going on, and then even worse is we take on problems that we can't affect. So, uh, you know, another one of my little quips was, uh, you know, um, a rational person, uh, can, uh, sort of, uh, a rational person sh- should, should cultivate indifference to things that are out of their control, right? Uh, or a rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things that are out of their control. Uh, and I'm as guilty as anybody of doom surfing on X or social media and getting worked up about things that I can't do anything about. (laughs) Right? Like, do I wanna be fighting those battles in my mind when I literally cannot do anything about it? So if you find yourself looping on a problem, like you're watching the news too much and you're getting caught up in a problem you can't do anything about, um, you have to step away from that. And, uh, modern media is a delivery mechanism for memetic viruses-And not- what's happened now is, you know, 100 years ago, 500 years ago, if something wasn't happening in your immediate vicinity, you wouldn't hear about it, it wouldn't be a problem for you. But now every single one of the world's problems has turned into a m- mimetic virus which is going into the battlefield of the news, and is trying to infect your mind in real time.

Chris Williamson 54:17 Hyperspeed.

Naval Ravikant 54:18 So that, yeah, so that you become obsessed with the war in Ukraine, which is really far away, or you get obsessed with climate change, or you get obsessed with AI doom, or you get obsessed with whatever. And there's nothing as riveting as the old religion, "The world is ending. The world is ending. Pay attention, the world is ending." And if you don't-

Chris Williamson 54:34 It's a Cassandra complex at global scale.

Naval Ravikant 54:35 ... Cassandra complex at global scale. And I would argue that large percentages of population are essentially just infected with these memetic viruses that have taken over their brain and are causing them to do incredible gyration about things that probably aren't even true or are greatly exaggerated, but even to the extent they are true, they are things that that person can do nothing about, and they should put their own house in order first. So, you know, another little line I have for myself is, "Your family is broken, but you're gonna fix the world." (laughs) Right? People are running out there to try and fix the world when their whole lives are a mess.

Chris Williamson 55:05 That's a banger. Oh my God.

Naval Ravikant 55:06 Right? And- and I think it defies credibility if you can't fix your own life first. I'm not gonna take you seriously if you can't fix your own life. Like, all these philosophers who, you know, seem like people you emulate and so smart or, like, these brilliant celebrities, and they go off and commit suicide. Well, you just kind of invalidated your whole way of life.

Chris Williamson 55:23 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 55:23 It's like that line of- in, uh, No Country for Old Men where the killer is waiting for the protagonist, and protagonist shows up and the killer says, "Well, you know, if your set of rules brought you here, then what good are your rules?" (laughs)

Chris Williamson 55:34 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 55:35 Right? Didn't work. Um, I- I- I- I am self- I'm holistically selfish in- in that I want to be objectively successful in everything I set out to want.

Chris Williamson 55:46 Mm-hmm. Yeah, uh, you have one life, don't settle for mediocrity.

Naval Ravikant 55:49 Don't settle for mediocrity. And- and I think the only tr- like, people debate intelligence, for example, right? We talk about IQ tests and all that. But I think the only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life, and there are two parts to that. One is getting what you want, so you know how to get it, and the second is wanting the right things, knowing what to want in the first place. I could want to be a, you know, six-foot-eight basketball player and I'm not gonna get that, so it's wanting the wrong thing. So-

Chris Williamson 56:16 So that's wanting something that you can't get, but-

Naval Ravikant 56:18 That's wanting something you can't get, but-

Chris Williamson 56:19 ... it's also wanting something that you don't want.

Naval Ravikant 56:21 Yeah, th- wanting something that's a booby prize. There are plenty of booby prizes out there too, right?

Chris Williamson 56:25 (laughs) I haven't heard that-

Naval Ravikant 56:26 Right? Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:26 I haven't heard that word in about 20 years.

Naval Ravikant 56:27 Yeah. Prizes that are just not worth having or that create their own problems.

Chris Williamson 56:30 But if you're not careful, you can end up in a place in life not only that you don't want to be, but one that you didn't even mean to get to.

Naval Ravikant 56:37 That's if you're kind of proceeding unconsciously. Uh-

Chris Williamson 56:39 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But how many people are?

Naval Ravikant 56:40 And- and- and- and usually I think people end up there because they are, uh, going on autopilot with sort of societal expectations or other people's expectations. So, uh, you know, or out of guilt or out of, like, uh, mimetic desire. You know, Peter Thiel has this whole thing from Rene Girard about how, uh, mimetic desires or our desires are picked up from other people, uh, and some of those are automatically baked into society, like, you know, go to law school, go to med school, go to whatever, go to business school. Um, or they might be from watching what your friends are doing and, you know, the other monkeys are doing. Um, or it might just be, you know, what your parents' expectations are, might be out of guilt. You know, guilt is just society's voice speaking in your head, socially programmed so you'll be a good little monkey-

Chris Williamson 57:19 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 57:19 ... and do things that are good for the tribe. Um, but I think the- the- the best outcomes come when you think it through for yourself and decide for yourself, and I don't think people spent enough time deciding. For example, we run on these, uh, four-year cycles. You know, y- in Silicon Valley, you go join a startup, you vest your stock over four years. That's the standard.

Chris Williamson 57:39 Okay.

Naval Ravikant 57:39 Um, uh, in, um, uh, college, you know, you go for four years. High school, you go for four years. Um, some things take longer. You know, you have children, they hit puberty nine years later. That's like a nine-year cycle until that relationship changes. Um, but we're used to these fairly long cycles, multiyear cycles in which we are committed to things. You go to law school, you know, four or five year cycle. You go be a lawyer, 40 year cycle. These are very long cycles. The amount of time we spend deciding what to do and who to do it with, very short. (laughs) Very, very short.

Chris Williamson 58:12 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 58:12 Right? We spend, you know, three months deciding, one month deciding on a job where we're gonna be for 10 years or 5 years. And because a lot of discovery is path dependent where the next thing you find on the path is dependent on where you were on the previous path, you sort of start going down this vector that is a very long distance. People decide frivolously which city to live in, and that's gonna decide who their friends are, what their jobs are, their opportunity, their weather, their food supply, their air supply, quality of life, you know. It's such an important decision but people spend so little time thinking it through. I would argue that if you're making a four-year decision, spend a year thinking it through, like really thinking it through.

Chris Williamson 58:47 25% of the time.

Naval Ravikant 58:48 Yeah, exactly. It- there's the secretary theorem, I don't know if you know that one, in computer science.

Chris Williamson 58:51 Is that, uh, after you've done this many people, pick the best-

Naval Ravikant 58:54 Correct.

Chris Williamson 58:54 ... one of the next however many?

Naval Ravikant 58:55 That's right.

Chris Williamson 58:56 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 58:56 Yeah, the secretary theorem is this computer science professor is trying to figure out, uh, how much time he should spend interviewing secretaries and then how long to keep the secretary. So let's say he's gonna have a secretary for 10 years, does he keep searching for, you know, one year, two years, three years, one month, two months? What is the optimal time? Uh, and it turns out that the optimal time is somewhere around a third, about a third of the way through, you take the best person you've worked with and try to find someone that good or better.

Chris Williamson 59:22 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 59:23 So that by the time you've gone about a third of the way through, you have, excuse me, seen enough that you now have a sense of what the bar is-

Chris Williamson 59:32 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 59:32 ... and then anybody who meets or exceeds that bar is good enough.

Chris Williamson 59:35 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 59:35 And this applies to dating, this applies to jobs and careers, this applies generally. But the interesting thing about the secretary theorem is that it's actually not time based. It's not based on one third of the time. It's iteration based.

Chris Williamson 59:47 It's the number of candidates.

Naval Ravikant 59:48 The number of shots you took on goal.

Chris Williamson 59:49 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 59:49 That's right. So you want to- to have lots and lots of iterations. So in that sense-

Chris Williamson 59:53 Which means that you need to bail out quickly and you need to be decisive quickly.

Naval Ravikant 59:57 That's right. You-

Chris Williamson 59:57 Oh, you need to- you need to take opportunities quickly and bail out quickly.

Naval Ravikant 1:00:00 Correct.

Chris Williamson 1:00:01 Okay.

Naval Ravikant 1:00:01 Like, if you go back and you look through failed relationships, uh, probably the biggest regret will be staying in the relationship after you knew it was over.

Chris Williamson 1:00:07 I didn't leave sooner. Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 1:00:08 Exactly, you should have left sooner. The moment you knew it wasn't gonna work out, you should have moved on. So in that sense, I think Malcolm Gladwell popularized this idea of 10,000 hours to mastery. I would say it's actually 10,000 iterations to mastery. It's not actually 10,000, it's some unknown number, but it's about the number of iterations.

Chris Williamson 1:00:23 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 1:00:23 That drives a learning curve. And iteration is not repetition. Repetition is a different thing. Repeating is doing the same thing over and over. Iteration is modifying it with a learning and then doing another version of it. So, that's error correction. So if you get 10,000 error corrections in anything, you will be an expert

Naval Ravikant 1:00:40 at it.

Chris Williamson 1:00:40 Don't partner with cynics and pessimists. You mentioned there about, uh, the people who've got a nightmare going on at home and are trying to fix the world, but a lot of the time that cynicism and pessimism we find it in ourselves. We see the world, whether we want to, whether it's because we've imbibed what the news or, or the negative people around us have said, or it's a bit more kind of endogenous than that. It's just sort of in us, it's the way that we see the world. How can people avoid cynicism and pessimism within themselves?

Naval Ravikant 1:01:09 Yeah, uh, cynicism and pessimism is a tough one. It's, we're naturally hardwired for it. Again, I go back to evolution. I s- I'm sorry to keep harping on evolution, but within biology there's very few good explanatory theories and, you know, theory of evolution by natural selection is probably the best one. So if you can't explain something about life or psychology or human nature through evolution, then you probably don't have a good theory for it. And I would say that pessimism is another one that comes out of this, which is in the natural environment, you're hardwired to be pessimistic because let's say that I see something rustling in the woods, and if I move towards it an- and it turns out to be food and prey, then good, I get to eat one meal. But if it turns out to be a predator, I get eaten and that's the end of that. So we are hardwired to avoid ruin, um, and, and, uh, you know, just dying. So we are naturally hardwired to be pessimists, but modern society is very different. Despite whatever problems you may have with modern society, it is far, far safer than living in the jungle and just trying to survive. Uh, and the opportunities and the upside are nonlinear. For example, when you're investing, if you short a stock, you, the most money you can make is 2X. You just lose ... Y- y- you know, if the stock goes to zero, you double your money.

Chris Williamson 1:02:16 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 1:02:17 But if the stock is an next NVIDIA and it goes 100X or 1,000X, you make a lot of money. So upside through, because of leverage is nearly unlimited. Uh, also in modern society because there's so many different people you can interact with, if you go on a date and it fails, there are infinite more people to go on a date with. In a tribal system, there might have been 20 people and you can't even get through all of them. So modern society is far more forgiving of failure, and you just have to sort of neocortically realize and override that.

Chris Williamson 1:02:44 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 1:02:45 You have to realize that you're much more running a search function to find the thing that'll work, and then that one thing will pay off in massive compounding. Once you find your mate for the rest of your life, you find your wife or your husband, then you can compound in that relationship. It's okay if you had 50 failed dates in between. The same way once you find the one business you're meant to plow into and it'll compound returns, it's okay if you had 50 small failed ventures or 50 small failed job interviews. It doesn't, the number of failures doesn't matter and so there's no point in being a pessimist. It's, you want to be an optimist, but I would say you want to be s- you want to be skeptical about specific things. Every specific opportunity is probably a fail.

Chris Williamson 1:03:24 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 1:03:24 But you wanna be optimistic in the general. In the general, you want to be like, "Something in here is gonna work out."

Chris Williamson 1:03:28 How would you navigate that tension?

Naval Ravikant 1:03:31 I mean, exactly as I said, I'm optimistic in the general that if something fails right now, then this is a little woo-woo, but it wasn't meant to be. It was a learning experience. It was an iteration. As long as I learned something from it, then it's a win. If I didn't learn from it, then it's a loss. But i- as long as you're learning and you keep iterating fast and cutting your losses quickly, then when you find the right thing, you have to be optimistic and compound into it. So you don't want to jump into the first thing, you don't want to marry the first person you date necessarily, unless you got very lucky.

Chris Williamson 1:04:00 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 1:04:00 Um, but you, you want to investigate and explore very, very quickly until you find the match, and then you have to be willing to go all in. You have to be willing to move your chips to the center of the table. So both those, uh, m- both those m- uh, approaches are required.

Chris Williamson 1:04:16 So it's a barbell strategy. It's sort of black or it's white, and most people are sort of stuck in this gray bit and m- like half in, but I kind of don't really know if I am and ...

Naval Ravikant 1:04:24 Yeah. I also think like labels like pessimists, optimists, cynic, uh, introvert, extrovert, these are very self-limiting. Humans are very dynamic. There are times when you feel like being introverted, there are times when you feel like being extroverted. There are contexts in which you'll be pessimistic, there are contexts in which you'll be optimistic. Leave all those labels alone. It's better just to look at the problem at hand, look at reality the way it is, try to take yourself out of the equation in a s- in a sense. Like obviously y- you're involved, but motivated reasoning is the worst kind of reasoning. Uh, you're not gonna find truth through highly motivated reasoning. You have to be objective, and objective means trying to take yourself out of it as much as possible, or at least your personality out of it as much as possible.

Chris Williamson 1:05:06 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 1:05:07 And so to the extent you run with this thick identity and personality, it's going to cloud your judgment. It's gonna try and lock you into the past. If you say, "I'm a depressed and unhappy person-"

Chris Williamson 1:05:17 This proclamation.

Naval Ravikant 1:05:17 "... yeah, I'm gonna be unhappy," that's a way of locking yourself into your past. Even saying, "I have trauma, I have PTSD." Yeah, you, you feel something. There are memories, there are flashes, there are occasional bad feelings, but don't define yourself by it because then you'll lock it into your identity and you're just gonna loop on it. It's better to stay flexible because the reality is always changing and you have to be able to adapt to it. Adaptation is also intelligence. Adaptation is survival.

Chris Williamson 1:05:41 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 1:05:41 Adaptation is kind of how you're here. You're here because you're an adapter and your ancestors were adapters. So to adapt, you'll, you'll see things clearly and if you're seeing them through your own identity, it's gonna cloud your judgment.

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Naval Ravikant 1:07:12 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:07:20 Moving on to sort of thinking about happiness, obviously a topic of yours that's a...

Naval Ravikant 1:07:26 It's honestly the one