55 quotes of Naval Ravikant that can change your life
55 quotes of Naval Ravikant that can change your life
I follow Naval Ravikant very closely and truly believe in everything he says. Naval is one of the well-known Silicon Valley investor and AngelList founder.
Naval is my unofficial and a virtual advisor who I follow closely. I read and analyze everything he says. This week, I curated 55 quotes said by Naval here for you. This is coming from the bookmarks and notes I have on Notion from different podcasts, articles and Twitter threads of Naval.
You can read and bookmark this page to come back and re-read later. In case if you don’t agree on something, I’d love to hear your views and get your prospective on it.
Let’s get started.
Naval's Laws:
The first step to being happier, is to believe you can be happier.
Anger hurts YOU, first and foremost.
What you do, and how you do it, is so much more important than how hard you do it.
Productize Yourself – Create a product out of whatever it is that you naturally and uniquely do really well.
Find a career/job where you’re tracked on the outputs, rather than the inputs – this will allow you to control your time much better.
Discipline is just you fighting with yourself to do something you don’t want to do.
When faced with a difficult choice, if you can’t decide, the answer is no.
If you have 2 choices to make, and they’re relatively equal (it’s 50/50), take the path that’s more difficult and more painful in the short term.
In times of interpersonal conflict, make the choice that will leave you more equanimous (internally calm).
Guilt is just society’s voice speaking in your head.
You don’t have to deal with anyone you don’t want to – just walk away.
We’re afraid of death because we fear we haven’t spent our time here on earth wisely.
On Reading:
It’s better to go through a book really slowly, and struggle and stumble and rewind, than it is to fly through it quickly just to say, "Well now I’ve read 20 books.".
I would rather read the best hundred books over and over again until I absorb them, rather than read every single book out there.
Read what you love until you love to read.
It’s far more important in life to know the basics really well across a few domains and combine that than it is to try and be a deep expert in any one domain.
When it comes to reading, I’d make sure your foundation is very, very high-quality.
On Life:
I don’t care how rich you are. I don’t care whether you’re a top Wall Street banker, if somebody has to tell you when to be at work, what to wear and how to behave, you’re not a free person. You’re not actually rich.
The peace that we seek is not the peace of mind, it’s peace from the mind.
You have social statisticians, scientists, and researchers in lab coats, literally the best minds of our generation figuring out how to addict you to the news. And if you fall for it, if you get addicted. your brain will get destroyed.
We are overexposed to everything. The way to survive in modern society is to be an ascetic, it is to retreat from society. There’s too much society everywhere you go. You have a society in your phone, society in your pocket, society in your ears… It’s socializing you and programming everyone. The only solution is to turn it off.
To me, peace is happiness at rest and happiness is peace in motion. You can convert peace to happiness anytime you want.
In today’s day and age, many people think you get peace by resolving all your external problems, but there are unlimited external problems. The only way to actually get peace on the inside is by giving up the idea of having problems.
When you’re memorizing something, it’s an indication that you don’t understand it. You should be able to re-derive anything on the spot and if you can’t, you don’t know it.
If you’re smart, you should be able to figure out how to be happy. Otherwise, you’re not that smart.
Your real resume is just a cataloging of all your suffering.
The way to retire is actually to find the thing that you know how to do better than anybody. And you know how to do it better than anybody because you love to do it. No one can compete with you if you love to do it. Be authentic and then figure out how to map that to what society actually wants, apply some leverage, put your name on it so you take the risks but you gain the rewards, have ownership and equity in what you do, and then just crank it out.
On Wealth:
I believe everybody can be wealthy. It’s not a zero-sum game; it’s a positive-sum game.
People who are living far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyle just can’t fathom.
All the benefits in life come from compound interest, whether in relationships, life, your career, health, or learning.
You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. Aim to have a job, career, or profession where your inputs don’t match your output.
The reason you want wealth is because it buys you freedom, so you don’t have to wear a tie like a collar around your neck, so you don’t have to wake up at 7 AM and rush to work in traffic, so you don’t have to waste away your entire life grinding all your productive hours away to a soulless job that doesn’t fulfill you.
Successful people have a strong action bias.
Productize yourself (create a product out of whatever it is you do naturally and uniquely well)
Aim to become so good at something, that luck eventually finds you. Over time, it isn’t luck; it’s destiny.
If you’re good with computers, if you’re good at basic math, if you’re good at writing, if you’re good at speaking, and if you like reading, you’re set for life.
The number of iterations drives the learning curve (your speed of learning a field more so depends on iterations, not the hours you put in).
Get comfortable with frequent, small failures. If you’re willing to bleed a little bit every day, but in exchange, you win big later, you’ll be better off.
Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.
Reject most advice (but remember you have to listen to/read enough of it to know what to reject and what to accept).
Results take TIME. In entrepreneurship, you just have to be right ONCE. The good news is you can take as many shots on goal as you want (usually every 3-5 years, 10 at the slowest).
Know that your physical health, mental health, and your relationships will bring you more peace and happiness than any amount of money ever will.
On Desire:
Desire to me is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.
Happiness is clouded by unlimited desires. Because of this, limit the number of desires you have.
Your time:
Meetings should really be phone calls, phone calls should be emails, and emails should just be texts.
Set an aspirational hourly rate for yourself and stick to it.
I would encourage everyone to be RUTHLESS about not scheduling things. You will HAVE to disappoint people, but when they want your time, that’s their problem, not yours.
Busy is the death of productivity.
Leverage:
The most important form of leverage is the idea of products that have no marginal cost of replication (aka product leverage).
Product leverage is how fortunes will be made in the digital age – using things like code or media.
Combining labor leverage, capital leverage, and product leverage is a magic combination for tech startups.
Product and media leverage are permissionless – they don’t require someone else’s permission for you to use them or succeed.
The robot revolution has already arrived – we just keep them in data centers/servers.
Coding is a superpower because it allows you to speak the language of the robots and tell them what to do.
You can replicate your efforts without having to involve other humans.
That's it!
I hope you re-read all these quotes and think deep on whether any of these makes sense or not.
Let me know in comments which one you liked the most and which one you relate to yourself.