The Best of Naval Ravikant on The Joe Rogan Experience
Key takeaways on wealth, freedom, and living a meaningful life.
I recently came across a fantastic podcast episode where Naval Ravikant is interviewed by Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience from 2019.
For those unfamiliar, Naval is an Indian-born American entrepreneur and investor, best known as the co-founder and former CEO of AngelList and the creator of the incredibly famous tweetstorm “How to get rich (without getting lucky)”.
He's also an early-stage investor in companies like Uber, Foursquare, Twitter, Postmates, and Yammer.
Many consider this one of the best Joe Rogan Experience episodes, and while listening, I found myself taking copious notes.
The full conversation is over two hours, but if you're short on time and want to absorb the key insights without committing to the entire episode (though I highly recommend it), you’ll enjoy today newsletter.
Naval is an incredibly deep, articulate thinker, and here are the highlights I found most impactful ⬇️
📚 Reading a book to completion can be a vanity metric. I’d prefer reading the same 100 great books over and over and absorb them fully. It’s all about understanding concepts.
💅 Celebrities are the most miserable people in the world. Because they have a strong self-image that is built up by compliments, but then it takes just one hater to easily tear it down. It’s better to be rich and anonymous rather than poor and famous.
🚀 We live in an age of infinite leverage: our actions can be multiplied a thousand fold (e.g. by writing a newsletter, by investing capital, by having people work for you, by writing code, etc.).
🧠 The impact of good decision-making is much higher now than in the past. To be effective (in business and life), you need a clear and calm mind, because a clear mind leads to better judgment and outcome.
🏃 As a knowledge worker you want to function like an athlete: you train hard, you sprint, then you rest. Then you reassess, get feedback and repeat the process.
💰 Own a business (or equity) to gain your financial freedom. If someone can tell you when to go to work and what to wear, you’re not free.
📱 In the future high-quality work will work as a gig economy fashion: work will be organized in sprints and will be mission-based.
🤖 Automation has been happening since the dawn of time (e.g. printing press, electricity, etc.): new jobs are being created all the time (and they are usually more creative jobs), but it’s impossible to predict what jobs are going to be created.
💸 Universal basic income would bankrupt a country. Universal basic income does not give ‘meaning’ to people, which is what we care about the most. Meaning comes through education and capability. It’s better to provide “basic services” instead (e.g. free education to all).
🏦 The bankers have violated society: they have taken huge risks, where they privatized the gains and they socialize the losses. But free markets are intrinsic to humans. Capitalism is bad when it does not provide equal opportunities (which is different and better than equal outcome).
⚖️ We all want to be socialists, but with the head we’re capitalists. The larger the group of people and the less trust there is, the better the incentives have to be aligned. The smaller the group, by all means we should be a socialist/communist (e.g. with your family, be a communist).
😶🌫️ Social media is weaponized. You have social statisticians, scientists and researchers figuring out how to addict you to these things, and if you get addicted, your brain will get destroyed. This is the real modern struggle.
⚛️ Everything has become atomized: we live alone, our parents don’t live nearby, our friends don’t live nearby, we don’t believe in religion anymore, in country anymore. It’s fine, we have a lot of freedom, but we have companies working to addict us to things, and when they come to attack us, we’re alone and we can’t resist.
🗳️ Nowadays you are forced to pick sides. Nobody has the privilege not to have political opinions.
🔲 There’s no room for nuances, people are very polarized. They are forced to fit in one of the two sides, and this does not make you a clear thinker.
🧘 Being alone and enjoying it is a real superpower. Meditation is self-therapy and it is the art of doing nothing. Don’t put effort into it or against it.
🪷 Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion. You can convert peace to happiness anytime you want. If you’re a peaceful person every activity you do will be happy. Peace is not about external problems, but about giving up on the idea of problems itself.
📊 People are not going to give up economic growth. There are 3 billions of Indians and Chinese that do not want to live in poverty.
✍️ Being forced to write down your thoughts helps to understand them more.
🌱 Understanding the basics, the principles of something, is better than memorizing more advanced concepts. When you’re memorizing is an indication that you don’t understand.
❓ The meaning of life is a “why” questions. You can keep ask “why” forever, and it’s endless. You end up with Agrippa's trilemma where you only have one of the following 3 dead ends: (1) Infinite regress: “Why? Because of this. Why this? Because of that. Why that? Because of…”, and it just keeps going forever. (2) Circular reasoning: “Why A? Because of B. Why B? because of A”. (3) Axiom: “Because of God. Because of maths, Because of science. Etc”. These are stopping points.
💲 Everyone can be rich. Imagine if tomorrow everybody was trained as a scientist or an engineer: robots would be doing everything for us, from cleaning to cooking, from flying planes to driving cars. And we humans would just focus on creativity, to entertain each other and research science and technology. Richness is in education.
🙁 Possessions don’t make you happy. However, lack of material possession can make you unhappy, but being rich in possessions is not going to make you happy.
📣 “Smart people cannot be happy” - this is so untrue. If you are smart you should be able to figure out how to be happy, otherwise you’re not that smart.
Here’s what you might have missed recently on ‘Getting Better’:
🙉 The peace we seek is not peace of the mind but it’s peace from the mind. The fundamental delusion of this age is thinking that there’s something external to us that can bring us peace and happiness.
🧩 Today in society you get rewarded for creative work, for creating something brand new, that society did not even know that they wanted.
🎁 The most powerful money-makers are “personal brands”, people with a unique set of skills they’ve built through the years, by combining diverse competencies into a unique expertise/knowledge. These people stand out because they've built something authentic, and as a result, they face no competition.
⌛ Nassim Taleb said that there are two great addictions: heroin and a monthly salary. That’s why you can’t get rich renting out your time. Even when you start charging more and more for your time, it’s a slow upgrade loop that will make you upgrade your lifestyle at the same time (e.g. bigger house, fancier car).
🔎 When judging others you’re going to feel good for a moment, but then you’re going to feel lonely and see negativity everywhere. The world just reflects your own feelings back at you. Reality is neutral.
☀️ Get more sunlight, hug more, smile more, spend more time in nature. These “hacks” are not just outward signals of being happy, they are feedback loops to be happy.
🧠 Watch your mind all day long. Watch what it does. Don’t judge it, don’t try to control it. You can meditate 24/7, because meditation is not a sit-down-close-your-eyes activity. Meditation is watching your own thoughts like you would watch anything else in the outside world.
🤓 Trying to sound smart is a bad disease. I suffered from it in the past and I ask myself this question to understand if my desire to learn something is real: “Would I be still interested in learning this thing if I couldn’t ever tell anybody about it?”
💯 You’re never gonna make more money than what you think you’re worth. Therefore, pick an aspirational hourly rate and be extremely jealous of your time. For example, if I have to do something and it’s below my hourly rate, I won’t do it and I’ll pay someone else to do it for me (this obviously does not apply to leisure time, family, and friends).
🎨 Art is just creativity. Anything that is done for its own sake: loving somebody, playing, creating something. Art and learning are a luxury, but these are not 100% or 0% thing: in your life you can start moving towards more and more of that.
See you all next Sunday 🗓️
Thanks,
Giacomo
Wow! I will have to checkout this podcast. Thank you
Thank you for this, Giacomo. It is a wonderful reminder that true success isn’t just about wealth or fame; it’s about living meaningfully, embracing our inner calm, and nurturing our sense of freedom.
I enjoyed reading Naval reminds. Clear thinking requires avoiding extreme labels and considering nuances is a valuable takeaway. Clarity of thought comes not from taking sides but from understanding complexities and embracing diverse perspectives, which I appreciate that.