Naval Ravikant - 11 Rules for Life (Genius Rules)
I compiled Naval's principles that had the greatest impact on my life
Hey friend!
In today’s newsletter, I have compiled Naval Ravikant’s life principles. Naval has laid out many principles, but here I only selected the principles that I think are the most core principles, timeless and that have had the greatest impact on *my* personal life since I first discovered his wisdom almost 3 years ago!
Hope you find it valuable :)
👨 People
Naval Ravikant is the co-founder of AngelList and co-author of Venture Hacks. He has invested (early-stage) in companies like Uber, Twitter and FourSquare.
📝 Notes
Rule #1 — Be ready to start over
"The greatest superpower is the ability to change yourself." - Naval Ravikant
Once we choose a life / career path and we invest significant time in it, it is very hard to look for a new path and start over — Starting something feels confusing, you are more likely to make mistakes and be seen as a fool. But under some circumstances, that is the best thing to do!
“The Fool is the precursor to The Saviour”
- Jordan Peterson
“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
- Steve Jobs
“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life…”
- Steve Jobs
Rule #2 — When Inspired, Act Immediately
“Inspiration is perishable – act on it immediately”
- Naval Ravikant
Naval says that inspiration is a beautiful and powerful thing — So when you have it, use it immediately! Because as time goes by, your inspiration slowly fades away!
This is why Naval says one should be “impatient with actions”. You want to leverage on your inspiration energy as much as possible. But at the same time, one should be patient with the results, because you are dealing with non-linear complex systems (that is, all nature / social / economic activities — since these run under a Power Law) so it takes time to see results!
“Impatience with actions, patience with results.”
- Naval Ravikant
Also, learn to prioritize and apply your inspiration wisely…
“Health, love, and your mission, in that order. Nothing else matters.”
- Naval Ravikant
Rule #3 — Choose to Be Yourself
“If you stop trying to figure out how to do things the way other people want you to do them then you get to listen to that little voice inside of your head that wants to do things a certain way and then you get to be you and no one in the world is gonna beat you at being you.
You're never gonna be as good at being me as I am. And I'm never gonna be as good at being you as you are. So certainly listen, absorb… but don’t try to emulate — it’s a fool’s errand.
Instead, each person is uniquely qualified of something. They have some specific knowledge, capability and desire that nobody else has! That's just purely from the combinatorial of human DNA and development
So your goal in life is to find out the people who need you the most. To find out the business that needs you the most. To find out the project and the art that gives you the most — Because there's something out there just for you!”
(transcript from his interview with Shane Parrish)
“Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.”
- Steve Jobs
The combinatorics of human DNA and experience are staggering. You will never meet any two humans who are substitutable for each other.
- Naval Ravikant
Rule #4 — “Do What Feels Like Play to You, But Looks Like Work to Others”
Naval explains that there are 4 components to his famous quote that are equally important:
“Feels” → You feel it. You have your heart on it.
“Play” → It is fun to you!
“That’s how I know no one can compete with me on it.
Because I’m just playing 16 hours/day.”
- Naval Ravikant
“Looks” → Because the outside person doesn’t have the feel.
“Work” → If it looks like work, it means that is useful (for a segment in Society) and you can monetize it!
“Don’t be a career. The enemy of most dreams and intuitions, and one of the most dangerous and stifling concepts ever invented by humans, is the “Career.” A career is a concept for how one is supposed to progress through stages during the training for and practicing of your working life.
There are some big problems here. First and foremost is the notion that your work is different and separate from the rest of your life. If you are passionate about your life and your work, this can’t be so. They will become more or less one. This is a much better way to live one’s life.
Make your avocation your vocation. Make what you love your work.”
- Steve Jobs
Rule #5 — Choose your Desires Carefully
“A happy person wants 10.000 things. A sick person just wants 1 thing. So… it’s your unlimited desires that are clouding your peace, your happiness.”
“Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want”
- Naval Ravikant
“Have desires. You are a biological creature! But just be very careful of your desires. Don’t focus on more than 1 desire at a time — The universe is rigged in such a way that if you just want one thing and you focus on that… you will get it! But everything else… you gotta let go.”
(transcript from his interview with Joe Rogan)
"While you can have virtually anything you want, you can't have everything you want."
- Ray Dalio
Rule #6 — Fall in Love with Reading
“I probably read 1-2 hours / day. And that puts me in the top 0.0001%. It accounts for any material success that I’ve had in my life and any intelligence that I might have.”
Naval argues that he is on the top because real people don’t read an hour a day!
He also lays out the key to make yourself an avid reader — just make reading an habit! And how you do it an habit? By reading whatever you like! Naval says that is almost doesn’t matter what you read, because you are in the phase of making it an habit! Once you gain the habit, you can go and pick up more intellectually challenging material!
"Read what you love until you love to read."
- Naval Ravikant
Naval also says that it doesn’t have to be books specifically — It’s everything that contains ideas and information: Blogposts, Twitter…
Picking Nuggets Note:
Personally, my 3 main sources of learning are:
* Videos and Podcasts.
* Books
* Shortform (Platform that creates the best study guides from hundreds of non-fiction books)
Charlie Munger reads around 500 non-fiction books every year. He said the following:
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time -- none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads--and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”
It’s not about “educated” vs. “uneducated.” It’s about “likes to read” and “doesn’t like to read.”
- Naval Ravikant
Rule #7 — Master the Basics
“Now I realize that the biggest mistake is memorization… To live in congruence with reality… You want to have a deep understanding of what you do and why you do it. So, it is much more important to know the basics really well than it is to know the advance.” (transcript)
"To think clearly, understand the basics.”
- Naval Ravikant
“A clear mind leads to better judgment, leads to better outcome.”
- Naval Ravikant
Having a deep understanding of the basics is much more useful in Life / Business compared to knowing the advanced stuff!
e.g./ You don’t need Calculus but a real grasp of Arithmetics for counting change at the grocery store, figuring out the valuation of businesses and probabilities of events!
"Boil things down to the most fundamental truths and then reason up from there."
- Elon Musk
“Richard Feynman has a piece that takes you from counting numbers on hand all the way to calculus in 4 pages of text. It is a complete unbroken logical chain that takes you through geometry, trigonometry, pre-calculus, analytic geometry, graphs… all the way to calculus. He didn’t have to memorize anything!” (transcript)
“When you are memorizing is an indication that you don’t understand”
- Naval Ravikant
Rule #8 — Be an Owner
When you are working for someone else (wage work), it’s extremely hard to build the kind of wealth that can give you financial freedom. This is, at its root, because of 2 big issues:
Your inputs (expertise & time) are very closely tied to your outputs. There are 2 derived problems from this fact:
You are getting paid by the hour — You are essentially selling your time for money. The implications here is that you can’t earn when you are on vacations, when you are sleeping or retired! Because *you* are the asset, you are the piece of labour (Labour leverage) of someone’s business.
Whereas if you own a business, the *business* is the asset — and if it’s a profitable business and it has some kind of leverage (Code, Internet Media, Labour or Capital), you can do whatever you want and the business will earn money for you!
“You are not going to get rich renting out your time.”
- Naval Ravikant
You are earning linearly and you get paid the bare minimum for you to do the job and stay in the Company!
If you owned a business, you can earn non-linearly and your income is only attached to the level of value that you provide to customers! And as you scale the business with increasingly more leverage (improve the software, create more content, hire more employees, raise capital from investors/banks…) there is no limit to how much you can earn!
“If you don’t own a piece of a business, you don’t have a path towards financial freedom.”
- Naval Ravikant
You are not being creative (in most cases). You are doing a set role which any other person can learn in school / university. If it can be taught, is not going to make you rich! Because it implies that you are replaceable. You are not creating anything new!
“You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.”
- Naval Ravikant
Rule #9 — Use the New Leverage
Last generation’s fortunes were all made from Labour and Capital. But most of this generation’s fortunes were all made from Code and (Internet) Media! Code and Media are the leverage of the new millionaires/billionaires!
Code Leverage
This is the software that is always running and serving customers without you having to be directly involved in each transaction.
Some notorious billionaires from Code Leverage — Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergei Brin, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs.
Media Leverage
This can be writing books, recording podcasts, tweeting, YouTubing…
Once you create and publish a piece of digital content, it can (hypothetically) be reproduced an infinite amount of times, without you having to be involved in each reproduction!
If you are interested in learning more about YouTube... I recently created a YouTube Guide with my own journey, lessons I learned and mistakes I made, and much more! - Here's the link :)Permission
“Probably the most interesting thing to keep in mind about
new forms of leverage is they are permissionless. They don’t
require somebody else’s permission for you to use them or
succeed. For labor leverage, somebody has to decide to follow
you. For capital leverage, somebody has to give you money to
invest or to turn into a product.
Coding, writing books, recording podcasts, tweeting, You-
Tubing—these kinds of things are permissionless. You don’t
need anyone’s permission to do them, and that’s why they
are very egalitarian. They’re great equalizers of leverage. [78]
Every great software developer, for example, now has an
army of robots working for him at nighttime while he or
she sleeps, after they’ve written the code, and it’s cranking
away.”
Bottom Line
“Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media). Code and media are permissionless leverage. They’re the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep.”
Rule #10 — Create Empty Space
Naval argues that is critical to have at least 1-2 days in which you are not busy doing things. He calls it “empty space”, and this is super useful to have a clear mind! (if you are always busy, your mind is clouded with little to-do’s and you are unable to see the big picture of what you do). And when you think with a clear mind, your judgment and the quality of your ideas radically improves!
“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking”
- Nietzsche
“In an age of infinite leverage, judgment is the most important skill.”
- Naval Ravikant
Rule #11 — Overcome the Need for External Validation
"To me the real winners are the ones who step out of the game entirely -- Who don't even play the game. Who rise above it. And those are the people who have such an internal mental and self-control and self-awareness that they need nothing from anybody else."
- Naval Ravikant
Some instances that Naval mentions —> Jerzy Gregorek (author of the book “The Happy Body”), Buddha and J. Krishnamurti.
"If you could sit for 30 minutes and be happy... You are successful"
- Naval Ravikant
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
- Blaise Pascal
“Contra the prevailing belief, "success" isn't being on top of a hierarchy, it is standing outside all hierarchies.”
- Nassim Taleb
✅ References
► Naval Ravikant Podcast -
► Naval on The Joe Rogan Experience -
► Naval Ravikant on The Knowledge Project -
► Naval Ravikant on The Tim Ferriss Show -
► Naval Ravikant on Clubhouse -
📁 All the ideas in this article are saved and classified in a searchable Database, which (as of July 2024) contains nearly 2,000 timeless ideas (sourced directly from the most influential doers and entrepreneurs — captured on books, interviews/podcasts and articles).
I call this Database the Doers Notebook, and I’ve recently opened it for anyone who wants it.
🤔 Why did I build this?
Well, as the Latin motto goes, “A chief part of learning is simply knowing where you can find a thing.” And since it’s all 🔎 searchable, we only need to type a keyword to immediately get a list of insights related to it!
For instance, if I’m unsure about how to get more sales in my business, I can simply type the word “sales” and immediately get 88 search results! In this case from Jim Edwards, Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Balaji Srinivasan, Nassim Taleb, and many other remarkable individuals.
It’s like having a 🧠 second brain from which we can pull wisdom on demand.
And this is super valuable because it can significantly decrease the error rate in our judgment.
“In an age of infinite leverage [code and media], judgment is the most important skill.”
- Naval Ravikant
I actually made a video where I went through the list of insights I got for the keywords “sales” and “creative”.
So, if you wanna get better at sales and learn to be more creative (and also see all the features of the database and how you can get access) then definitely check out the video 👇
Until next time :)
Julio xx
P.S. If you liked this article, you'll definitely enjoy my free 80-page ebook. It’s packed with 23 big ideas (from top influential doers and entrepreneurs) to become better, richer and wiser. Download your copy here!