Joe Rogan Experience #1309 - Naval Ravikant

Two, one, boom. All right. We're live. (slaps table) Thank you very much for doing this, man. I really appreciate it.

Oh.

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

Thanks for having me.

My pleasure, my pleasure. You are one of the rare guys that is, uh, you're a big investor. You are, um, 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. That's a, it's a, that's an odd balance.

Yeah. You know, I, I think the reason why people like, uh, hearing me is because, like, if ... I- it's like if you go to a, 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?

(laughs)

So when you combine things you're not supposed to combine-

Right.

... people get interested. It's like Bruce Lee, right? Striking Thoughts Philosophy Plus Martial Arts.

Mm.

Uh, and, 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?

Yeah.

Every human basically is capable of every experience and every thought. Uh, you know, you're a UFC comedian, commentator, podcaster, but you're also more than that. You're also a father, uh, lover, you know, uh, 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, uh, as one of my friends says, uh, "Specialization is for insects," right?

Mm.

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 one thing. You've got one life, just do everything you're gonna do.

Y- I couldn't agree more, and, uh, I, I think that sometimes people find certain success in whatever the endeavor is, and then they think that that is their niche-

Yeah.

... and they stick with it, and they never change, and they, they ... uh, almost of- out of fear.

Well, it's, it's hard because, uh, there's a, you know, uh, the analogy around mountain climbing, like if you find a mountain and you start climbing it and you spend your whole life climbing it, and you get say two-thirds of the way, and then you see the peak is like way up there, but you're two-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. Nobody wants to do that. People don't wanna start over.