Eric Jorgenson: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
EPISODE 196
Getting rich is not just about luck; happiness is not just a trait we are born with. Building wealth and being happy are skills we can learn. Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor who has captivated the world with his principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval’s wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections and written by Eric Jorgenson.
So what are these skills, and how do we learn them? What are the principles that should guide our efforts? What does progress really look like?
“The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop."
The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness
INTRO
Naval Ravikant shares that getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it
Understand how to create wealth (4m59)
DRIVE AND MINDSET
Justin Cheung breaks down Naval’s advice on owning specific knowledge
Build Judgment (1m21)
Skill and expertise
ACTION AND HABITS
Naval gives us his 3 top tips/advice on how to make better decisions
Learn the Skills of Decision-Making (4m52)
Naval discusses a common mistake that people make when reading - not reading what you love
Learn to Love to Read (4m04)
OUTRO
Naval and Joe Rogan talk about why you have to make happiness your priority
Understand Happiness is a Choice (4m32)
READING:
Eric Jorgenson: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
If you would prefer a short summary of the book you can find it here on Blinkist.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 196. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons. And as always, I'm joined by Mr. Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning, mark.
Hey, good morning, Mike. I hope you are feeling as happy and enthusiastic as I am to be continuing our journey. Our series, our season, our adventures into the world of happiness.
I am feeling very ready and we have found so many great inspiring leaders and writers on the theme of happiness. And that theme continues to stay albeit with a twist. I might
say Marg that's right. The twist that, that. Delving into today, Mike is from more of an entrepreneurial or VC angle.
That's right. We are digging into the Almanac of Naval Ravikant, which was pulled together in a great little guide or great little collection by Eric Jorgenson. And Mike, this is really a, not only a collection or a consolidation, or maybe a Bible of Neal's thinking, but it's really culminated and curated in an insightful way that helps you and I, our listeners understand a little bit about how Naval who's this very well known, impressive VC and entrepreneur individual tackles his owns.
What a, what an interesting angle to bring into the series.
Yeah, it is a, it's a very different take and that's exactly why we've we've added him at this point in the series and ma I think we should touch base on some of the companies that Naval as a VC has been involved with. Have, you've got a bit of a list there.
I think why don't you hit us with some of the big names that we're, I'm sure everybody will know.
Look at Naval, he's an interesting individual. I don't know Mike, whether we've got time similar to SIM reading out all of our Patreon members, I need a couple of deep breaths and I need to do some stretching beforehand, but just to give you a little bit of an idea of Neal's.
In interests and inclusions and investments in a lot of early stage companies include Uber foursquare, Twitter, wish.com, push Poshmark, Postmates Thumbtack notion, snap logic, open door and clubhouse stack overflow bolt open DNS Yammer, clear view AI. So he's really spreading across a lot of different industries there, but he's also been involved in more than 10 unicorn companies.
Navar has been pretty intrinsic and important in the creation of a lot of the businesses that you and I and our listeners use pretty much every day, particularly Uber and Twitter. And he's kinda like an unsung hero who's behind the scenes. Working. Oh, sorry. And that's not even to mention angel list Mike of course.
Stop mark. I have to stop you. This show will just be reading out cuz it's over 200 companies who's invested in, something
like that. That's right. Over 200 companies. So if there's an interesting angle that we can bring into the happiness series, bearing in mind, we dug into the work of Dan Harris with Matthew McConaughy, T Ben Shahar, the D Lama, and more recently, Neil PCHA now digging into the Almanac of Naval Ravikant a guide to wealth and happiness is a great. Inclusion, I think, into this space because he's coming at it from, let's say, more of an entrepreneurial wealth angle.
Absolutely. And the thing that we can all look forward to breaking down, discussing and learning and understanding today is not just this idea of happiness, but how it relates to our skills, our entrepreneurial endeavors, and hopefully the wealth that we create on the other side of that.
And a big part of that is decision making, learning. And there's a huge amount of not only mindset shifts that you'll get from studying at the Naval RA camp, but also some fundamental habits and practices that you can do every single day. So mark, now that we've laid it all out there, let it, let us throw the thinking of Naval at our listeners and our members.
Where should we start? Let's start straight away with Naval breaking down and helping us understand how to create wealth.
There's this battle that happens on Twitter a lot between, should you work harder? And should you not like David Houser's on there saying it's like your slave driving people. And Keith boy is always on.
They're saying like, no, all the great founders work their fingers to the bone. First of all, they're talking about two different things. David is talking about employees in a lifestyle business, which is fine. Your number one thing in life. If you're not getting wealthy, you have a job. You also have your family.
You also have your life. But Keith is talking about the Olympics of startups. He's talking about the person going for the gold medal and trying to build a multi-billion dollar public company. That person has to get everything right. They have to have great judgment. They have to pick the right thing to work on.
They have to recruit the right team and they have to work crazy hard because they're basically engaged in a competitive sprint. So if getting wealthy is your goal, you are going to have to work as hard as you can, but hard work is absolutely no substitute for who you work with and what you work on.
What you work on is probably the most important thing. Finding product market, founder fit, which is how well you are personally suited to that business. The combination of those three, that should be your overwhelming goal. And you can save yourself a lot of time. If you pick the right area to work in, picking the right people to work with is the next most important piece.
And then third comes how hard you work, but they're like three legs of a stool. If you short change in any one of them, the whole stool's gonna fall down. So it's not like you can pick one over the other that easily. The order operations when you're building a business is, or even building your career is first figure out what should I be doing?
What is something where there is a market that is emerging? There is a product that I can build that I'm excited to work on and something where I have specific knowledge and I'm really into it. And then secondly surround yourself with the best people possible. And no matter how high your bar is, raise your bar because you can never be working with other people who are great enough.
If there's someone greater out there to work with, you should go work with them. I advise a lot of people who are looking at, who started to join in Silicon valley as say, basically pick the one that's going to have the best alumni network for you in the future. Look at the PayPal mafia. They work with a bunch of geniuses, so they all got rich.
So just try and pick based on the highest intelligence, energy, and integrity people that you can. And then finally, once you've picked the right thing to work on and the right people to work with, then you work as hard as you can. This is where the mythology gets a little crazy. People will work 80-120 hour weeks.
A lot of that's just status signaling. It's showing off. Nobody really works 80 to 120 hours a week. Sustained at high output with mental clarity, your brain breaks down, you just won't have good ideas. So really the way people tend to work most effectively, especially in knowledge work is the sprint. As hard as they can while they're working on something and they're inspired and they're passionate.
And then they rest to take long breaks. It's more like a lion hunting and much less like a marathon runner or running. So you sprint, then you rest, you reassess. And then you try again in which you end up doing if you end up building a marathon of sprints. Maybe just made a point to me on the side.
That inspiration is perishable, which is a very good point when you have your inspiration to do it right then. And there, this happens to me a lot with my tweet storms. I've actually come up with a whole bunch of additional tweetstorm besides the ones that are already out there, but sometimes it just hesitates or I just pause and then it just dies.
And what I've learned is if I'm inspired to write a blog post or to publish a tweetstorm, I should probably do it right away. Otherwise it's not gonna get out there. I won't come back to it. So inspiration is a beautiful and powerful thing. And when you have it just seize. So people talk about impatience.
When do you know to be impatient? When do you know to be patient? My glib tweet on this was impatience with actions and patience with results. And I think that's actually a good philosophy for life. Anything you have to do? Just get it done. Why? Wait, you're not getting any younger. Your life is slipping away.
You don't wanna spend it waiting in line. You don't wanna spend it traveling back and forth. You don't wanna spend it doing things that, ultimately, aren't part of your mission. And when you do them, you want to do them as quickly as you can, while you do them well with your full attention. But then you just have to give up on the results.
You have to be patient with the results because you're dealing with complex systems. You're dealing with lots of people. It takes a long time for markets to adopt products. It takes time for people to get comfortable working with each other. It takes time for great products to emerge as you Polish away.
So impatience with actions, patients with results. And as maybe you said, inspiration is perishable. So when you have inspiration, act on it right then and there, if I have a problem that I discover in one of my businesses, that needs to be. I basically won't sleep until at least the resolution is in motion and this is just a personal failing.
But if I'm on the board of a company, I'll call the CEO. If I'm running the company, I'll call my reports. If I'm responsible, I'll get on there right then and there and solve it. If I don't solve a problem, the moment it happens or I don't start moving towards solving the moment who happens, I have no peace.
I have no rest. I have no happiness until that problem is solved. So solve it as quickly as possible. I literally won't sleep until it's solved. Maybe that's a personal characteristic, but it's worked out well in business.
Mark. This got me big time, impatient with action, but patient with results. He really is talking about some interesting things here, which I think is very much on the mindset shift and we're gonna get to all the habits and the practices that you can do every single day.
But. Before you jettison yourself into that impatience with actions, but patient with results. One of the things I think he really encouraged us to do when we start projects, endeavors, maybe businesses and companies is to make sure he's elevating the conversation a little bit. He's before you just throw yourself at it, make sure you're working on something that's meaningful to you and with people that you like.
And I think what you're going to see a lot in this show is Naval is always about take time to think, pause and consider before you launch yourself. And I think that what we're seeing here in the pursuit of wealth and happiness, what is really encouraging us to do is to really critically think through with whom.
Are you going to do it? What are you going to do? And if you are going to do that, have a bias towards action and just be patient because with those things done good people on an interesting topic where the bias towards action, his hypothesis is the results will come. So I wonder, Mark, have you seen this, have you had the experience where you've actually been together with the right people on the right thing and just seen those results being patient with the results?
Or has it been hard? Tell me how you relate to this
experience? Yeah. Yeah. I think as I hear from Naval in that opening clip, and as I reflect on the happiness series, isn't it interesting how we can connect and see this. Idea of success through work, being so interconnected with your own mindset and interpretation of happiness, of patience, of gratitude and so on.
So for me, when I've done really difficult projects, yeah. My mindset and happiness is so affected by the idea of the marathon or, it becoming really difficult. And I think what's very consistent with what we've found on the show so far, and many other individuals that we've covered Mike, is that bias towards activity being a relief.
If you've got something that, let's say it's the show, let's say the moonshots team. We're all thinking ahead for a great show. Maybe it's one of our master series, maybe it's today. W we don't leave it until the last minute, because. It's gonna be doing a disservice for our listeners, as well as causing the three of us, this big anxiety.
So I think where I'm connected with that statement, you just read out the impatient with actions, patient with results. I'm connecting it to even what we do on the show. We are impatient towards the bias we want to get going. Yes. We wanna work hard, create something of value. And that's where I'm seeing a lot of similarity.
I think where, and what we come to learn from Navel is to keep that sustained, keep that moving. And then eventually we reap the benefits, like the lion hunting in the Savanna.
I would put it to you, as you were talking, then I was thinking that it is a lot like great sports teams where they say you have to trust the process.
You've gotta trust the process. Yeah. And the reason that you can trust the process is you've thought through doing good work with good people. I can just like it. Train, play hard, work hard and know that in the end we'll get the results, right? Yes. So you don't have to worry while you're on this pursuit.
Be it a project or building a whole new company. If you've got good people around you, you're working on something that matters, just have a bias towards action. And you know what, don't worry. Will we, or won't we succeed? You can trust the process because you've got those things ticked off. Maybe there's a fourth thing you could add to that.
And that would be if you become a member of the Moonshot's podcast , maybe you can trust the process a little more. So my, I think this is the perfect moment to tip our hats to our lovely steadfast members who make this entire show possible. Don.
Yeah. That's right. So as tradition dictates for those who are digging in deep they're patient with the actions they're inpatient with the actions, the patient with the results are our members and Moonshot's family members.
So let's please welcome. Bob Niles, John Terry, Nile Marline, Ken and DMR Marja and con RGO Yasin. Lisa SI, Mr. Bonk and Maria, Paul Berg, cowman and David, Joe, Crystal Evo and Christian hurricane brain, Sam Kelly, Barbara, Bob, and Dre, and Matthew, Eric and Abby HAI and Joshua, Chris and Kobe, Damien Deborah Gavin.
Lasse Tracy and Steve Craig, Lauren, Daniel, Andrew, Ravi, and avert. Mike, this list is long. Isn't
it? It's long and it's good. And I have to bring your attention into our listener's attention. They probably are all. Thinking right now that there was no trumpet from you, mark. Usually, yes. You begin roll call with a trumpet.
So I'm gonna let you think about that. And I will fill all the complaint emails that's okay. But. On a serious note, thank you to you our members you help us cover all of the different bills that we get every single month you have encouraged us to start our famous moon merch, which I think we might mention in our next show because the elves have been busy and we'll be ready to launch that very soon.
But on a serious note, thank you to you, our members, super grateful. And we really really encourage you guys to reach out to us. Avert actually he came up with a great topic for us to talk about, which is the second brain. So I've added that to the future shows list mark. So we've got more brain work ahead of us.
How is that? Yeah,
I can't wait to dig into the idea of second brain and linking your thinking, what a great little title, but for now, Mike, and we'll come back to avert in, in the future. We're gonna go back into the world of Naval. And this next clip we've got is actually from Justin Shung on YouTube.
Who's really helpful at breaking down a particular idea from Naval, which focuses on skill and expertise.
A specific knowledge is the part that a lot of people get tripped up on. And what it means is basically knowledge that only you can truly understand. And while some might think that it's what you study in school, it actually is the kind of stuff that you're naturally curious about.
You're obsessed about it. For some, it might be playing video games for others and might be, dance or coding or. Or working out once you arm yourself with that specific knowledge, it's much easier to get paid for that because there isn't a lot of competition actually Naval goes as far as to say, specific knowledge is not just what you're obsessed about, but it's knowledge about who you are as a person, no one can compete with you on being you.
I love that phrase because for a long time, I was wondering, oh, who's like my niche audience. And what do I talk about on this channel? A lot of great advice just encourages you to be as authentic as possible. And specific knowledge is really applicable in today's really fast changing world evolves in the school of thought that says, it really doesn't matter what you learned in college.
What matters much more today is to be an expert in a brand new field in the span of nine to 12 months. And that is much more important than having studied the right thing way back in
the day. Skills and expertise. Yeah. I think, this is really challenging me to ask the question of myself, what is the one skill that I have and am I working on it enough?
I really can't stress how much I experienced this. I hallmark the importance of expertise and skill for knowledge workers. And I would assume like you and I, many of our listeners are sort of knowledge workers. And I do really hope we have a few craftsmen that would be really cool. I do hope that we have some makers who do stuff and build stuff in the physical world, but a lot of us are working on ideas and products and businesses in the digital world or service experiences.
And so a big part of that is having a skill and expertise. And. I think there is this process that clip touched upon, which is what is your super skill that you're, you're naturally built to do. And are you developing it enough? Mark, when you hear this conversation about skill and expertise, I wanna kick it to you.
Like what are the skills you are working on? What are the expertise that you are building in this very information age, or the information revolution in which we are living in we're witnessing? What skills and expertise are you building for yourself?
I hope you're gonna let me have this one, Mike
Yeah, because I could choose a physical, digital product yep. That I utilize or a utility, but I'm actually gonna go for attitude. So attitude because, and the reason why I'm gonna claim this as a more modern day learning is the attitude to be able to keep up with and create divisions around the way that I use technology.
So when I'm at work, or even when you and I are recording our shows, I'll have very intentional activities that I do in order to try and create the best. Product or the best environment around myself. So whether it's utilizing lessons from Cal Newports, with digital minimalism, carving out, do not disturb or focus time blocking is very important to me.
And that enables me to utilize and use technology and products and be a better version of myself because I'm less distracted. Likewise, when it comes to thinking about new things or covering new topics or areas on the show, it's focusing on having a growth mindset. So having this desire to want to learn, maybe it's new products, maybe it's new ways of working.
Maybe it's sprints, like Naval said in the first show, in the first clip and. That's where I'm actively working on. That's the skill that I'm trying to really build on. Are you gonna let me have that one though?
I think I need more help to understand, are you talking about the skill of time management or focus?
Help me understand
this a bit more. I think it's really the skill around being open to being flexible. So having flexibility in the way that I manage my time.
Oh, okay. So you are going back to the, say the productivity series and looking at how you take ownership of your time. Yeah. How that resource is deployed.
Because I think as we all know, particularly those of us who are knowledge workers, your time is. Much more highly utilized nowadays, arguably maybe we're a little bit more efficient, but at the same time, I think there's a lot of work that goes onto your shoulders that you're expected to deliver because you've got a computer that's enabled, you've got teams around the world.
You can work in any different time zones. I think as we've all experienced it's a little bit of a challenge. And I think having the ability to try and utilize or take ownership of that time is the skill that I'm
working on. What's one breakthrough technique or habit that you have developed in the battle for your own time?
Being honest with people. I think that's probably putting it in the physical time area. That we've heard about on the show. So blocking, an hour or two in my calendar so that teams can see it, but also requesting it saying, Hey, I'm gonna be working on maybe doing some deep work or focused work in time X to Y please don't disturb me.
This is what I wanna do. Taking that ownership, having the confidence or the ability to share that with others, I think is something that I'm still trying to figure out while still working on, but that's definitely something for me that is a big tip, probably from that productivity series.
We did, it's helped me quite a lot in this modern day busy world.
Yeah, the look we're in a battle for our time. And I love what you're saying. You're essentially saying, taking it like carving out that time slot, let's say it's nine 30 to 11 saying I need that for work. There shall not be an invite going into that time slot yeah,
Exactly. Gandolph is there he's defending mine. You shall pass .
That's exactly it. Oh, listen and it's really interesting. Isn't it? You talk about permission asking for what you need or saying. No, so many of the great people that we've studied on this show say the art of success is not only knowing what to say yes to, but invariably, it's more often saying no to things that don't align with your purpose.
Exactly it is. It is that connection back into the Simon Sinek way of thinking about business, understanding what drives you. But I think that's where Navel is really leading us as well. Isn't it like you, particularly in that first, the first couple of clips we've heard it's Naval. Taking a real stance around understanding what you are good at, what you wanna work in, gather the team who are perfect for you, and then you work as hard as possible.
Yes. It's the focus. Yeah. It's the understanding and knowledge that I think he's really driving us towards. Isn't it? Yeah.
Look, there's another skill and expertise you can develop. And I believe Mark, it could be just as powerful as what you are talking about, and that is giving a review or a rating, a thumbs up, a star to our beautiful show.
Mark. If we wanna get this message of learning out loud together to be the. Very best version of ourselves. You gotta hit, like you gotta hit those stars. How do people do this mark? Because those moonshots, we need this love don't we?
Yeah. All those with a growth mindset and a desire to pick up and do something brand new today.
As you're listening to the show, open up your podcast app of choice. You'll probably even get it open right here. Right now. As you're hearing us pop along, hit like hit subscribe, hit the little heart button. And that makes a huge difference in getting the moonshot show out into the ears of listeners around the world.
And that's really what we're just trying to do here. We're trying to delve into the work of people like Naval and share it with the world. And it's you, our listeners who help us do that, your likes, your subscriptions, your thumbs up and as well as your reviews. Spread that through the algorithm and get us into the ears of listeners around the world.
And we've had a number of different countries throughout the journey so far, Mike, I remember we've had suez canal listeners. We've had Nepal, we've had all over the globe and it's thanks to you listeners for us to be able to do
that. Yeah. So get on there, thumbs up stars, whatever it takes you're listening to us right now.
Just slip the phone outta your pocket. As Mike hypnotizes, you open up the application five stars. Mike's great. Mark's a little dodgy, but we'll bear with just, I just we appreciate any good will that you have to give us here on the moonshot show and we've got so much coming up thus far. We've talked about skills, expertise.
We've been talking about how to create wealth. And now we're gonna turn to the business end of the season. It's about actions and habits, and we're gonna launch ourselves into learning the skills of decision making.
First is if I'm faced with a difficult choice, such as should I marry this person, should I take this job?
Should I buy this house? Should I move to this city? Should I go into business with this person? If you cannot decide the answer is no. And the reason is because modern society is full of options. There are tons and tons of options. We live on a planet of 7 billion people. We are connected to everybody on the internet.
There's hundreds of thousands of careers available to you. There are so many choices. You're biologically not built to realize how many choices there are, because we evolved in tribes or tribes of 150 people. Where if you pass at one choice, the second thing never comes along. Also when you choose something.
It takes, you get locked in for a long time. If you start a business that's 10 years, you get into a relationship that's five years, maybe more you move to a city that's 10, 20 years. So these are very long lived decisions. So it's very important that you only say yes, when you are pretty certain you're never gonna be absolutely certain, but you're gonna be very positive if you find yourself creating a spreadsheet for a decision, with a list of yeses and nos and pros and cons and checks and balances, and why, you know why this is good or why that's bad, forget it.
Yeah. You have to internalize it in your gut and in your heart. And you have to really want something before you go for it. So my first decision making heuristic is if you cannot decide the answer is no. The second decision making heuristic that I use is if you have two choices to make. Such as do I tell this person a, or do I tell them B or do I take job a, or job B or, do I make this sacrifice now?
Or do I go ahead and do what I want, whatever it is. If you have two choices and they're relatively equal choices, like if it looks 50 50 to, this is key for choices where it's lopsided, 1 75, a one's 25, obviously go with a 75, but if it looks equal to you a or B, and you can't decide, take the path that is more difficult and more painful in the short term, because what's actually going on is one of these paths requires short term pain, and the other one maybe requires pain further out in the future.
And what your brain is doing through conflict avoidance is trying to push off the short term pain. And by definition, if the two are even, and one has short term pain, that means that has long term gain. And by the law of compound interest, the long term gain is where you wanna go towards anyway. So your brain is overvaluing the side that has the short term happiness.
It's trying to avoid the one with short-term pain. So you have to cancel that tendency out. And it's a powerful subconscious tendency by leaning into the pain. As most of the gains in life come from suffering in the short term. So you can get pain in the long term working out.
Like for me, it is not fun. I suffer in the short term, I feel that pain, but then in the long term, I'm better off because I have muscles or I'm healthier. And now I'm gonna tell you about the third, your decision to be the third. One's a little different. The first one was focused on making the right long term decision.
The second one was on choosing how to split between two otherwise even paths. The third one is about cultivating peace of mind. And peace of mind is very important because it is the precursor to happiness. Happiness is one of those things that cannot be chased directly. If you chase happiness directly, which you're actually chasing this pleasure and pleasure eventually comes with a withdrawal symptom, like a pleasure is high, and then you crash down para pleasure is a Ferris wheel that you get on.
You write it up and then eventually you write it back down. But if you actually want to be happy, if you want to be content that comes from peace. And so the third decision making heuristic is if you are having this is very helpful in times of interpersonal conflict, where you're trying to figure out whether to say something to somebody or not that might make them angry or might get something off your chest to make the choice that will leave you more.
Economous is a fancy word for internally calm and settled make the choice that will leave you more. Economous at the
in the long term, Mike, we could have done an entire show just on that one
clip. Could I even go? Into the three different tips Naval gave us for making better decisions and focus on the second one.
I think that's the big, hairy, challenging one. Don't
you think? Yeah. Look at the first one, if you can't decide the answers. No, the third one. More peace of mind. You're right. The second one, if two equally difficult parts, choose the one that's more painful in the short term. That's so moonshots,
isn't it?
Mike? It's moonshots, but it's very counterintuitive. How many times have I found myself? Ah, just do that. That'll be fine.
And oh I do it. It's almost a daily challenge. Oh my God. There will be times whether it's choosing whether to go to the gym or having that cold shower, or maybe picking up the phone and calling somebody back.
Yeah. There's moments where you think, ah, wouldn't it just be nice if I didn't have to deal with this. Yeah. And you try it, I dunno about you Mike, but in the past I've put things off, but actually interestingly, when you do, when I do catch myself doing that and I realize, oh, I'm just avoiding it because it's simple and what I'm doing.
Is building it up so much that eventually I'm gonna crack by
doing it well. Okay. So this is a really good point because this is something that I have learned through so many mistakes in deferring, tough moments, decisions, hard work in deferring. I'm only making it worse. And the problem is you need to have stuffed up enough times doing this, to realize that you can use that suffering and go.
I'm gonna sort it out now. Cuz if I don't sort this problem, now it's 10 X worse in a week or a month or a year. But even though it is wiser to do it now, the short term pain can still be. Reluctant, reluctant avoidant and it is perhaps one of the most subtle, yet profound things we've discovered on the show is that people who have the ability to grab this moment going, I'm being really soft here and taking the easy path I'm gonna stop.
And I'm gonna take the harder path in the short term, cuz it will pay off in the long term. This is one of the big patterns we see in people who are very successful. People who are super fulfilled in their life and doing what they are meant to do are very prepared. To take the hard path in the short term to take the pain as Yoko willing will say problems.
Good. Good. As Joe Rogan talks about, get comfortable with discomfort. What I mean, David Goggins. Oh my gosh. He's the king of this. He's become uncommon, take, get primal face hardship and challenge, do not run away from it because mark, I think we all know it comes, comes back to BDU.
Doesn't it? What it does. And I think the build that we can do here and lead us. From the idea of decision making towards happiness is all of those individuals, Goins Yoko Joe, as well as Naval here, the idea of working on something now, in order to make it let's say more pleasurable or less painful, even in the long term is by doing it now.
And I would make the connection that satisfaction or relief that comes in the long term is a build on achieving happiness. So by making things quite difficult right now, knowing, oh, I don't really wanna have to do this, or I'm avoiding that pain by doing. I'm gonna personally look back at myself and feel maybe pride.
Maybe I'll feel happy or content with the amount of work and consideration that I put into it. And that's where the connection back into this mindset is coming to me, Mike, because if I can work on myself, get myself comfortable with the discomfort, then I'm gonna be maybe that little bit more satisfied and let's say happy in the future.
Wouldn't you say? Yeah.
So I'll give you a little technique I use. So you talk about there's like this good, there's a good thing. At the end of the rainbow, there's a destination. That'll make us happy, satisfied, fulfilled. So what I do, if I need a little extra incentive here is I allow myself to really experience the future state.
If I do X, I'm gonna feel really joyful. And I'm gonna think about and almost manifest that joy now and say, okay, see how good that is. That is ahead. That is down the path for me. And that is going to give me the capacity to make whatever sacrifice I'm caught upon to make right now, because I can really immerse myself in that feeling of what the reward will be at the end.
So it's a little technique that I've learned a lot through mindfulness practices, but if you're like I really should be doing this thing. It's gonna be a real hassle and a lot of work. Then I spend more time imagining manifesting. The goodness of the outcome, the experience, the wellbeing of the outcome to give me that stuff and I'm gonna do it right.
I'm ready. Because sometimes we're so overwhelmed with the commitment of right now, the painful route, the hard route that we lose sight of what's on the horizon. We lose sight of, oh, actually there's a really great thing at the end of this. So it's like a powerful way to remind yourself of what you're fighting for.
Anyway, that's just a little technique I use to try and take those more painful routes in the short.
Yeah, that's right. I think talking about advice and tips, we've got another clip now coming up from Naval, who again, with the idea of connecting us to happiness and connecting us to feeling satisfied and almost encouraging us to do things that maybe don't come quite so naturally is a common mistake that people often make specifically around reading.
The foundation of learning is reading. I don't know a smart person who doesn't read and read all the time. And the problem is what do I read? How do I read? Cuz for most people it's a struggle. It's a chore. So the most important thing is just to learn how to educate yourself. And the way to educate yourself is to develop a love for reading.
So the tweet that is left out, the one that I was hinting at is read what you love until you love to read. It's that simple. Everybody I know who reads a lot loves to read and they love to read because they read books that they loved. It's a little bit of a catch 22, but you basically wanna start off just reading wherever you are, and then keep building up from there until reading becomes a habit.
And then eventually you'll just get bored of the simple stuff. So you may start off reading fiction, then you might graduate to science fiction. Then you may graduate to nonfiction. Then you may graduate to science or mathematics or whatever it is, but take your natural path and just read the things that interest you until you understand them.
And then you'll naturally move to the next thing. And the next thing, and the next thing now, there is an exception to this, which is where I was hinting at what things you actually wanna learn, which is at some point there's too much out there to read. And even reading is full of junk. There are actually things you can read, especially early on that will program your brain a certain way.
And then later things that you read, you will decide whether those things are true or false based on the earlier things. So it is important that you read foundational things. And foundational things I would say are the original books in a given field that are very scientific in their nature. So for example, instead of reading a business book, pick up Adam Smiths, the wealth of nations, instead of reading a book on biology or evolution that's written today, I would pick up Darwin's origin of the species instead of reading a book on biotech right now that may be very advanced.
I would just pick up the eighth day of creation by Watson Andrick instead of reading advanced books on cosmology and what Neil deGrasse Tyson, Steven Hawking have been saying, you can pick up Richard Fineman, six easy pieces and start with basics physics. If you understand the basics, especially in mathematics and physics and sciences, then you will not be afraid of any book.
All of us have that memory of when we're sitting in. And we're learning mathematics and it was all logical and all made sense until at one point, the class moved too fast and we fell behind. And then after that, we were left memorizing equations, memorizing concepts, without being able to drive them for first principles.
And at that moment we were lost because unless you're a professional mathematician, you are not gonna remember those things. All you're gonna remember are the techniques, the foundations. So you have to make sure that you're building on a steel frame of understanding because you're putting together a foundation for Skys scrap.
And you're not just memorizing things, cuz if you're just memorizing things you are lost. So the foundations are ultra important. And the ultimate is when you walk into a library and you look at it up and down and you don't fear any book, you know that you can take any book off the shelf, you can read it, you can understand it.
You can absorb what is true. You can reject what is false and you have a basis for even working that out. That is logical and scientific and not purely just based on opinions. The beauty of the internet is the entire library of Alexandria. Times 10 is at your fingertips at all times. It's not that the means of education or the means of learning are scarce.
The means of learning are abundant. It's the desire to learn that's scarce. So you really have to cultivate that desire and it's not even cultivated. You have to not lose it. Children have a natural curiosity. If you go to a young child, who's first learning a language, they're pretty much always asking what's this what's that?
Why is it that they're always asking questions, but one of the problems is that schools and our educational system, and even our way of raising children, replaces curiosity with compliance. And once you replace curiosity with compliance, you get an obedient factory worker, but you no longer get a creative thinker and you need creativity.
You need that ability to feed your own brain to learn whatever you want.
Reading, reading, reading it is feeding and fertilizing your brain. It is oh my gosh. But mark, the thing that struck me the most about that one is like so many things reading has to be like working out every day. Isn't it amazing how many different things are on that absolute essential daily habit list from the moon podcast?
What have you got? Let's go through the list. I get to bed early, right? Get to bed early, get to bed. Cold shower. Meditate stretch journal read. The list is enormous, mark.
Yeah, you're right. Exercise. Yes. Listen to the moonshot show, read and rate and review the moonshot show and become a member.
There's so much, , there's so much to do every day, but you're right. I love it again, connecting this tip, this habit, this way of thinking about reading and how it is these stepping stones to creating a growth mindset. But I would say even more important, the confidence that you can, either a hold conversations that you feel comfortable in, you could go out and be in social situations, whether they're casual or business orientated, you can, as Naval says, walk into any library and pick up any book.
I think that. A real great, a really valuable demonstration and build on what a good growth mindset is. Mike, it's the confidence to be yourself. Yeah. And be comfortable with what you know.
Yeah. So what kind of habits or hacks have you been working on in terms of reading recently? My go-tos are book summaries.
Like I, I think I consume a book summary almost. Every day. So if someone recommends a book or asks me to think about something or a topic comes up that I'm like I need to know more about this. I just type the words, book summary, and then the theme or the person or the expert. That's a way to go, because you can, in five minutes you can totally get the gist of an idea and go, okay, I get it.
I want to know more, get the book or I know enough and move on to the next thing. What are you doing to tweak your reading and your learning?
I'm certainly trying to go to the library a little bit more. We've got a great library near us, so I can go out and take books and begin to get into them and then decide whether or not to purchase for Kindle or hard copy, but actually the step before that, to help me understand or make that good decision.
But Naval would say it is YouTube. I'll go to YouTube. I'll look for a really simple breakdown. Maybe it'll be an animated summary. Maybe it'll be a sort of a trailer or an introduction by the author themselves, or an interview that they've done to get a sense of what that thought is about. What have they written, what style or theme are they going for?
What value is it creating? And then from there, I'll go out and decide, is this something to pick up and flick through or is it something to go a little bit deeper and just go and purchase it straight away that's my go to thing, YouTube, because there's so many great similar to your book summaries that you can find online similar in the sense that it delivers some of the key lessons or thoughts and helps me understand them in quite simple
way.
And how often are you reading? Tell us about and what are you reading? Oh
look, I think a lot of the time, Mike. The benefit of pulling together a show for moonshots will be the inspiration for myself. So if I'm pulling together a show, some key lessons from Deval Racan, what I might do is stumble upon another strain of thought or another mental map or another mental model that's built on.
Maybe some of the work that Nial has done and what that enables me to do, giving it an angle around moonshots is to have a reason to go out and do it. If I haven't got the, let's say the drive or the interest, or maybe even the awareness of a particular individual, the moonshot show, although I might be tooting our own horn here is is actually for me, at least the way in for a lot of these authors entrepreneurs and thinkers, because it's helping me.
Bring them up to the surface and learn about them. Yeah.
Oh, wow. Yeah. I I really do encourage our listeners to try and make reading a daily habit. I love the idea of getting book summaries or YouTube summaries. I definitely encourage you to mark up, highlight anything that you read.
And then there is a great tool called read wise, which will pick up all of your highlights and reintroduce you to them in the days following the highlight, which is a very good way to really put those learnings deep into your mind. So that's read wise, which is another tool I use, and then you can build a very good workflow.
So everything you absorb that you really hand pick is then brought back to you regularly as a thought quote, as a little idea. And that's how you can really cement the thinking in, into your mind. But as we talk about thinking, and as we reflect a little bit on sort of the overall mindset of Naval Rav one thing here is really powerful.
And that is that there is a connection between all the different people, Dan Harris, Dai Lama, Naval Ravikant the entire series of the happiness series is really connected by this fundamental thought. And that is that happiness is not something we defer until the end of a journey, a project, or even a lifetime, but it's something very different.
So for the most loyal moonshots listeners and members who have lasted to the end of the show, I am so delighted to play for you. Now, the most powerful thought of this entire series, did you make a gradual shift to happiness or was it a radical
change? It's ongoing. It's gradual every day so you're happier today than you were a month ago.
Yeah, allegedly. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very happy these days. So it's actually hard for me to hang out with normal people. really? Yeah. So you've made a
significant shift. Over the period of like how many years? Probably
about eight years. Eight years. Yeah. Wow. And is this something that you've
pursued through certain books or is it just like you've made an understanding or gained an understanding in your own mind and then started pursuing it based on that
understanding?
Yeah, it's very personal. It's basically you have to decide it's a priority and then I tried every hack I possibly could. I used to, I tried all the, I tried meditation. I tried witnessing and I even tried Siri just to see what it would feel like. How did it feel? It turned me from a pessimist to an optimist, but I didn't like the physical side effects in order.
Did I wanna be on a drug for a sustained basis? So I dropped it and I felt it did turn you into an optimist. Yes. I used to be a pessimist. Yeah. I started doing things like I would start looking at the, in every moment in everything that happens, you can look on the bright side of something right.
And so I used to do that forcibly and then I trained it until I became second nature. So for example, like a friend of my wife's was over and she, when we were dating and she took all these photos, she took like hundreds of photos and then she sent them all to us. And my immediate reaction was like, why are you dumping hundreds of photos of my phone?
I don't need hundreds of photos to have some judgment. That was my immediate reaction. And then I could say, actually, How nice of her. She sent me hundreds of photos. I can pick the one that I like. There are two ways of seeing almost everything. There are a few things that are like high suffering.
So you can't do that other than just saying this is a teacher, right? But I slowly worked through every negative judgment that I had until I saw the positive and not second nature to me. I also realized that what you want is you want to clear your mind, so you wanna let go of thoughts. Happy thoughts disappear ahead automatically.
Very easy to let them go. Negative thoughts linger. So if you interpret the neg the positive in everything very quickly, you let it go, right? You let it go much faster. Get simple hacks, get more sunlight. Learn to smile, more, learn to hug more. These things actually release serotonin in reverse. They aren't just outward signals of being happy.
They're actually feedback loops to being happy. Spend more time in nature. These are obvious. Watch your mind all day long. Watch what it does not judge it, not try to control it, but you can meditate. 24 7 meditation is not a sit down close your eyes activity. Meditation is just basically watching your own thoughts.
Like you would watch anything else in the outside world and say, why am I having that thought? Does that serve me anymore? Is that conditioning from when I was 10 years old? Like for example, getting ready for this podcast. You got ready? I didn't, oh, good. I did but I did. I couldn't help it. And what happened was the few days leading up to this, my mind was just running and normally my mind is pretty calm and it was just running and running.
And every thought I would have, I would imagine me saying it to you. My brain couldn't help, but rehearse. What it's doing, it's just rehearsing all the time to talk to you. And then I was even rehearsing telling you about the rehearsal. So I was all playing all these meta games and I was just like, shut up, stop it.
What is going on? And it took me a while to figure out, oh yeah. You know what it was when I was a kid in Queens and I had no money and I had nothing and I needed to save myself, the way I got out was by sounding smart, not being smart, sounding smart. That was the skill I perfected. So I am hardwired to always rehearse things.
So I will sound smart. It's a disease. It keeps me from being happy. But when you see that, when you realize that when you understand something, then it naturally calms you down. So after that, I stopped rehearsing as much. Wow. But it's still a train ride. That is a
a really interesting point that you.
Want to sound smart, so that many people do that. And especially young people, when you see someone who is smart or someone who appears smart, they say smart things, right? God, I wanna sound smart. I want people to think about me the same way. I think about that person.
That is my disease. That is what clutters my mind.
I, I the thing I have to ask myself now is if I can, would I still be interested in learning this thing if I couldn't ever tell anybody about it,
Mike, again, Naval is bringing it home for us on today's show. There's so much that we could dive into, particularly that closing thought around.
If I had to internalize it and not talk to anybody, would I still enjoy it? But I think the big thing for me within that clip is the idea that happiness is a choice that we decide how much time and how much work to spend on. Oh
yeah. It's like a car. All the shows line up against this salt, with different flavors and expressions of how you might get there.
But in the end, do you choose happiness? Because it can mean like saying I want a six pack. That means you gotta cut back on your calorie intake. You gotta work out. If you choose happiness, you gotta cut out on the negative stuff. You gotta start on the positive stuff.
You gotta get super grateful. You gotta get super humble. Are you really prepared to do that? And that's the big twist here is that everyone we've listened to has made this choice in the series haven't they marked
yeah. Yeah. I mean going all the way back to Dan Harris, with 10% happier, we were learning from him that happiness was not necessarily a kind of secret.
There wasn't a secret way to do it. And it wasn't a destination that all of us are gonna instantly or eventually come into. Instead what every single author spiritual leader has said to us without, throughout this series is that it's something you have to work. Actively build yourself daily building in those practices to notice that blue sky, to notice how you respond and interact with other people.
Because it is, as Naval said it earlier in the clip, there's that compound interest, you do a little bit today and a little bit tomorrow, gradually over time, you're gonna become a, probably more pleasant to be around , but also be happier in yourself and more satisfied with what it is that you are doing.
The hard thing really hits you in the guts because you're like the deliberateness and the intention of you. You gotta make that choice. You can, something can happen. You can, as Naval was talking about, you can receive hundreds of photos and say, oh my God, why did they do it?
Or you can say, Cool. Lots to choose from that moment is the choice. Isn't it, mark. It's not that easy. Is it?
Look, it's not that easy. And as we are hearing from Neil Pacha, who was giving us almost like a playbook into how to think about or how to create a manual around these habits, it is something that all of us, I think along the journey of this happiness series have started to appreciate just how difficult it is.
But at the end of the day, Mike, if these VCs, these spiritual leaders, these authors, these anchormen. If all of us can learn something from these individuals, these high functioning, successful people. Then I think we are in a pretty good spot to learn from them, to absorb them, to build some new daily habits and just figure out what works for you.
And I exactly. So of all those things that work, which one works the most for you?
I'm going to really focus on the reading actually, I think starting with what we already do on the show, but really giving it more of an attitude shift, maybe utilizing read wise as you've called out just to compartmentalize and pull out those insights that I learn along the way is gonna be really valuable for me.
As you look back on the show with Naval, what have you particularly taken away from it?
Definitely taking the more painful route in the short term. unfortunately oh, gotta work on that one. Gotta work on that one. Mark, listen, thank you to you and thank you to you. Our members and listeners here are on show 196, where the work of Eric Johnson, the Almanac of Naval Ravikant was studied indeed.
And the journey into the work of the Navy. Ravikant started with understanding how to create wealth and the key. I was impatient with actions and patient with results. We then went on to look at building skills and expertise. And importantly, we looked at the art of decision making where if two paths are equally difficult, take the harder path.
And if you wanna build that happiness, you wanna build that wealth. You've gotta love to read. You've gotta feed the mind so you can make all those better decisions. And fundamentally what we came to together today on the moonshots podcast, where we learn out loud together is the big choice, not only of this show, but of this series.
Happiness is a choice. And what we learned from RO Naval is the most important. To be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you can make and a skill that you can develop, you can choose to be happy, and then you work on it. It's just like building muscles never has the truth being told like that.
That is so very true. And if you make that choice so many good things can happen, you can learn out loud together. You can be the best version of yourself. And that is exactly what we are here to do on the Moonshot's podcast. Okay. That's a wrap.