Joe Rogan Experience #1309 - Naval Ravikant

two one boom all we're live thank you very much for doing this man i really appreciate it i've been absorbing your information and listening to you talk for quite a while now so it's it's great to meet you thanks for having me my pleasure my pleasure you are one of the rare guys

that is you're a big investor you are 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 it's not balance yeah i think the reason why people hearing me is because

if it's if you go to a circus and you see a bear that's 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 so when you combine things you're not supposed to combine people get interested it's bruce lee striking thoughts philosophy plus

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 every human is capable of

every human is capable of every experience and every thought you're ufc comedian commentator podcaster but you're also more than that you're also father lover thinker etc so i the model of life that the

so i the model of life that the ancients had the greeks the romans where you would start out and when you're young you're just 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

government then you become a philosopher there's this arc to life where you try your hand at everything and as one of my friends says specialization is for insects so everyone should just be able to do everything and so i don't believe in this model anymore of trying to focus

this model anymore of trying to focus your life down on one thing you've got one life just do everything you're going to do i couldn't agree more and i think that sometimes people find certain success in whatever the endeavor is and then they think that is their niche and they

think that is their niche and they stick with it and they never change and they almost out of fear well it's hard because there's a the analogy around mountain climbing if you find a mountain and you start climbing you spend your whole life climbing it and you get say two

life climbing it and you get say two thirds of the way and then you see the peak is 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 going to have to go back down to the bottom and look for another path nobody wants to do that people don't want to start over yeah and it's the nature of later in life that you just

want to start over yeah and it's the nature of later in life that you just don't know 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 elon

over that nobody else does 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 you two 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

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 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 don't even know if it's willing to be a fool it's just to me that the most exciting

it's just to me that the most exciting thing is to try to get better at something to learn things it's really exciting when you just have incremental progress and something that you're completely new to yeah i live for the aha moment that moment when you connect two things together that you hadn't connected

together that you hadn't connected together before and it fits nicely and solidly and it 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 yeah it's curiosity fulfilled and it's what little children do too my

little children do too my little son is always asking why and i always try and answer him and half the times i realize 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 when you're you're talking to your kids

when you're you're talking to your kids and you say look the reality is i don't know a lot of things yes i've just memorized a lot of things and there's certain things that you just can't know yeah you realize that you have you have answers for a few things that you've thought through then you

you've thought through then you have cover-ups trap doors 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 yes and then you've got a whole bunch of memorized stuff because a lot of your a lot of intelligence these days just the external brain pack of civilization

a lot of intelligence these days just the external brain pack of civilization i know it's out there i know the answers are out there know how to look them up and i've memorized some of them and i understand how money works and the federal reserve prints it and what this government thing is but not really so not good enough to teach it in university yeah

so not good enough to teach it in university yeah i think people do that with almost everything in life these days in terms of have a one page a one cheat a brief summary of what and the explanation for what this very

the explanation for what this very complex subject might be tldr don't give me the 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 don't give me the tweet i just i already know yeah i got really fascinated by the way you read because i thought there was something wrong with me by doing that

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 go based on your whims whatever you're interested in well i was raised by my i was raised by a single mom in

by my 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 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 live in the library and i read everything i read every

and i read everything i read every magazine i read every pictograph or every book or every map i just ran out of stuff to read i just read everything 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

when people are putting up photos on twitter instagram of look at my pile of books that i'm reading it's a show-off thing it's a signaling thing yeah sure 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 yeah because

read all the books yeah because your brain has finite information in a finite space you get enough advice it all cancels to zero 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

read to satisfy my genuine intellectual curiosity and it can be anything it could be nonsense it could be history 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 but i will read for understanding so a

really good book i will flip through i won't 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

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

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 i have no attention span or you could view that as a

negative and be i have no attention span or you could view that as a positive i multitask really well and i can dig really fast i can if i find a thread that's interesting i can follow it through five 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 the library of alexandria that i

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 yeah you brought up two awesome points first of all the social media aspect of books and anything it's

anything it's it's such a weird way to display your life because it's you're displaying the best aspects of your life and some a glass case just it's an unrealistic version of your life that you cultivate and you curate

and you curate and i'm i'm as guilty of that as anybody everybody's guilty of it i'm guilty of it too yeah i pose with my dog every time i run yeah we're always signaling yeah it's rather than really looking at yourself you're looking at how other people look at you so it's this one

people look at you so it's this one remove mental image and it's a disease because social media is making celebrities of all of us and celebrities the most miserable people in the world because they're this strong self-image that gets built up it gets built up by compliments every time somebody pays you or me a compliment and

somebody pays you or me a compliment and we're well thank you then that builds up an image of who we are and then one idiot comes along one out of ten one out of a hundred 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

around this big weighty self-image and it's just very easy to be attacked and because you're you're famous or you're well known people want to attack you so being a celebrity is no good it's a problem one of my tweets is and these are all reminders to myself is you want to be rich and anonymous not poor and

all reminders to myself is you want to be rich and anonymous not poor and famous there's benefits to it of course of course but we wouldn't do it has unusual problems that you don't get trained for and you really will not understand unless you experience it i was

and you really will not understand unless you experience it 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 we're in the middle of an intense conversation she's

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's

knew me she used to think that's just part of the price of being famous that people you that's just part of the price being famous and now when it interrupts her life and it interrupts the children and it interrupts friends and she now she's this is annoying this is

she's this is annoying 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

can get a photo of you then that boosts their social media profile hey i'm sitting here with the vault look at that smile anonymity is a privilege on the other hand it's self-inflicted we brought it on ourselves yeah we don't think we knew what it was though we did but we carry on so yeah

but we carry on so yeah it tells us we are getting something out of it so i there are times when someone will approach me in public and i'm a little resentful and there are other times i'm just i'm really grateful that i worked for this i got this is the payoff just embrace it smile grit and

payoff just embrace it smile grit and bear it but you have a different celebrity too you're you're a hero amongst investors and amongst you've just i'm a hero among young male geeks which is those are some of my favorite people but that's not the

which is those are some of my favorite people but that's not the celebrity i think most people set out to get especially most guys you want the cute females yeah i look at my brief little youtube clips i have a tiny little podcast going

now and it's 95 mail sure yeah this is very highly 18 to 35. yeah we what do we what is the numbers yeah it's in the 90s yeah you did that one you do that one very small podcast where you just have small

podcast where you just have small three or four minute clips yeah so what it was i did a tweet storm called how to get rich without getting lucky and it got pretty popular in twitter and it's really about wealth creation i just use the clickbaity title and it's trying to lay out

and it's trying to lay out timeless principles of wealth creation that if you absorb them you become the person who can create wealth create business make money and my theory behind that is there are three things everybody wants there's more than three but let's just start with three the three

let's just start with three the three 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 signal that goes on we don't want to money and i don't care about being happy and happiness is for stupid people but let's face it you want

people but let's face it you want to be rich and happy and healthy that's the trifecta 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 three i think they can be taught and the fitness i'm not going to teach there are a lot of people who you've had on

the fitness i'm not going to teach 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 i don't and i worked at those and so i've learned a few things there are some

i've learned a few things there are some principles and so i try to lay them out but in a timeless manner where you can 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

put a name to them so this podcast ended up explaining this tweet storm so there's a tweet storm with 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

with for myself when i was really young around 13 14 and i've been carrying them in my head for 30 years and i've been living them and over time i just realized sadly or fortunately the thing that i got really good at was looking at businesses and figuring out

looking at businesses and figuring out the point of maximum leverage to create wealth and capture some of that and do it in a very long-term way not let the banker crash the economy get filled out way but build businesses and help people and provide value

help people and provide value 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 so these are little three four five minute snippets i don't to say the same thing twice

i don't to explain in detail i just i feel 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 it tries to be very concise it tries to be high impact it tries to be timeless

high impact it tries to be timeless and it has all the information i think you need the principles that if you absorb these and you work hard over 10 years you get what you want so i've got the one on wealth creation i'm going to attempt to do one on happiness is a big word but