The Four Biggest Things I've Learned From Naval
This project started as me making notes for myself as I listened to Shane Parrish’s incredible podcast with Naval. As the quality of the notes got better and better, I started looking for ways to share this with the world. But I told that whole story in How the Navalmanack came together.
Here, I’ve collected four of the most impactful things I learned while writing this book in my own words.
Jealousy can’t be selective
Extreme outcomes are the result of extreme inputs. Being jealous of outcomes without being willing to take on (or even acknowledge) the inputs is facepalm stupid.
We almost reflexively pick individual aspects of people to envy. Then, expect ourselves to live up to a few of these extreme outcomes at a time. When you realize that’s what you’re doing it seems clearly insane and unproductive. But it’s hard to see those jealous thoughts for what they are in the moment.
This realization helped me reframe the reflex to jealousy into a reflection on myself: “What does jealousy tell me about my values that I’m not currently living?”
Naval’s original quote from the book:
“Jealousy was a very hard emotion for me to overcome. When I was young, I had a lot of jealousy. By and by, I learned to get rid of it. It still crops up every now and then. It’s such a poisonous emotion because, at the end of the day, you’re no better off with jealousy. You’re unhappier, and the person you’re jealous of is still successful or good-looking or whatever they are.
One day, I realized with all these people I was jealous of, I couldn’t just choose little aspects of their life. I couldn’t say I want his body, I want her money, I want his personality. You have to be that person. Do you want to actually be that person with all of their reactions, their desires, their family, their happiness level, their outlook on life, their self-image? If you’re not willing to do a wholesale, 24/7, 100% swap with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous.
Once I came to that realization, jealousy faded away because I don’t want to be anybody else. I’m perfectly happy being me.”
Don’t seek risk… but take Accountability
My whole life people have defined entrepreneurship as “people who seek risk to grow a business.” Yet some of the best entrepreneurs and investors are the best at minimizing risk.
It’s easy to “seek risk” -- go put it all on 00.
It’s also easy to minimize risk -- never place a bet.
The concept of Accountability helped me reconcile this middle ground. Choosing to be accountable is choosing to be responsible for an outcome. The undertaking might be incredibly risky, or not very risky at all. The rewards might be enormous or very tiny. Usually, risk and reward are related. Make a big bet, get a big reward. Your personal set of skills and knowledge can give you an edge knowing where to take on accountability.
Look for opportunities to be accountable for things that have a good risk/reward ratio.
Look for opportunities to be accountable for things you are confident you can achieve.
Look for opportunities to be accountable for areas where you can manage or reduce risk.
Taking accountability is vital to building wealth. If you are not willing to be accountable, you will not be rewarded. Nassim Taleb has a lot to say about this topic in Skin in the Game.
Naval’s Original Quote from the book:
Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage. [...]
Accountability is a double-edged thing. It allows you to take credit when things go well and to bear the brunt of the failure when things go badly. [...]
Clear accountability is important. Without accountability, you don’t have incentives. Without accountability, you can’t build credibility. But you take risks. You risk failure. You risk humiliation. You risk failure under your own name. [...]
Seek, build, and grow Leverage to build wealth
The single word ‘leverage’ is a fantastic summary of ways to extend your impact beyond a linear, hourly input-output. If you can only earn with your own hourly time, the only way to build wealth is incredibly deep specialization (doctor, lawyer, etc). By creating and using leverage (through money, employees, or products) you can create more value for more people in the same amount of time.
The tools of leverage help you accomplish more:
Small example (Product): Instead of doing 5 hour-long 1:1 meetings, spend one hour writing a document about priorities and principles for them to read.
Medium example (Employee): You have taught yourself how to purchase fresh ingredients, create an incredible sandwich, and sell lunch delivery service to companies. You are earning $40,000 year doing this. By hiring an employee to purchase ingredients and make the sandwiches, you can focus on selling your lunches to more companies (your most valuable skill). The business grows. Now, pay your employee $40,000, and now you earn $60,000.
Bigger example (Capital): A friend is starting a very promising company. Rather than working there to get equity, you can invest your money and/or help bring in other investors, earning a % of the value of the equity that capital bought.
Naval’s Original Quote from the book:
“Humans evolved in societies where there was no leverage. If I was chopping wood or carrying water for you, you knew eight hours put in would be equal to about eight hours of output. Now we’ve invented leverage — through capital, cooperation, technology, productivity, all these means. We live in an age of leverage. As a worker, you want to be as leveraged as possible, so you have a huge impact without as much time or physical effort.
A leveraged worker can out-produce a non-leveraged worker by a factor of 1,000 or 10,000. With a leveraged worker, judgment is far more important than how much time they put in or how hard they work.“
Happiness is a choice
This is a jarringly huge statement: Nothing outside of your own mind has any affect on your own happiness. You have control of your interpretation of the events of your life, and you can choose whether they make you happy or unhappy. The skill of interpreting the events of the world to make you happier (or at least not unhappy) is learnable.
It’s funny how life is a process of finding out how wise your parents actually are. Naval says the same things my parents did when I was 5 -- it just takes 30 years of repetition and life experience for things to sink in.
Naval’s original quote from the book:
“Happiness is a choice you make and a skill you develop.
The mind is just as malleable as the body. We spend so much time and effort trying to change the external world, other people, and our own bodies — all while accepting ourselves the way we were programmed in our youths.
We accept the voice in our head as the source of all truth. But all of it is malleable, and every day is new. Memory and identity are burdens from the past preventing us from living freely in the present.”
