Naval Ravikant

Driving, for me, is a massive exercise in being mindful. My goal, however, is not to mind the suffering of others but instead, to take those inputs, not associate with them, and let them go.

For instance, some driver doesn't want to get in the queue at the back, so they drive up and cut over in front of me or a car or two up. There are a lot of thoughts on that that could go through your mind. These range from "no fair" to "jerk" to other things.

But, I've come to realize the best way to deal with that is to detach. You can either not let the person in and then go down that range of thoughts/emotions (primarily negative) or just let them in and not dwell on it. Observe it (assuming it's not jeopardizing anyone's safety) and let it go.

This is a very simple exercise, but it has the potential to be carried on to larger experiences in life. I'm not here to judge if you don't think it is, I just know what makes sense to me. And this is not something I have come up with on my own. This and similar techniques have been highlighted in quite a few books I've read, people I've listened to at various events.

This for me is a much deeper discussion and I think completely personal to the experiencer. I tend to fall on the side of being mindful of yourself and the struggles/suffering of existence are of your own doing and choices (obviously, this is a simplistic statement, but to me true on a high level).

I've been listening/watching quite a bit of Naval Ravikant podcasts/videos. I…

Ah, my topic of specialty. I've been doing this for a decade, but only figured it out over the past ~5 years.

Pros:

- Inbound Marketing: You not only are able to bring part of your work with you between jobs, but your thinking and learning in public demonstrates your interest, expertise, and growth over time such that it tends to attract jobs and other opportunities to you (including opps that are not formally open to everyone yet)

- Bloom's Taxonomy: Retain more of what you learn by writing it down in your own words rather than simply holding it in your head

- The 1% Rule: 99% of people lurk, less than 1% make content, you stand out in your field simply by saying something

- Cunningham's Law: “The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.” Being publicly wrong attracts teachers, as long as you don’t do it in such
high quantity that people give up on you altogether. Conversely, once
you’ve gotten something wrong in public, you never forget it.

- Positive Reinforcement: Building in a social feedback mechanism to
your learning encourages more learning. As you build a track record
and embark on more ambitious projects with implicit future promise,
your public activity becomes a Commitment Device.

- Productizing Yourself: well, Naval said it best so I'll just drop a link https://nav.al/productize-yourself

Cons:

- It takes extra effort to write down something you're already thinking. E.g. it can feel like…

nope, not only this guys examples are bad but he just tries too hard to be a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. i called him that & he blocked me [1] for some reason. probably there's some truth in it that he got hurt.

his examples are so bad. i've read paul graham's essays, naval's thread & alex hormozi's $100m offers book & all are quite good & easy to understand. naval's thread is a big hard but he has whole bunch of podcasts (4 hours) [2] explaining them in detail & articles [3] to accompany them.

the op's entire schtick is to sell his courses by writing articles. first he wrote an article on build a business, not an audience [4] & then did a complete 180 turn & has been building an audience ever since. then he started selling courses. it's like his schtick is to go against the popular ideas & attack them to garner following.

although, he does have some good insights in a few of his articles like when he summarized a book (nathan latka) or a video (sam parr)... rest of his posts are purely trying to hard to be a contrarian. tries to hard to be like peter thiel except he doesn't have any real arguments.

you don't have to believe me. just read $100m offers & apply it. that book could've saved me many years of trying to figure out the framework myself & has every single technique mentioned on how to make a good offer. if you actually follow the advice to the t, you will actually be on the pathway to your 1st million. not to say, the author himself is worth…

Feeling the same pain of walking through the creator's hell.

Heard somewhere we are not supposed to be happy and absent minded. Staying on hard side of things shapes us and make complete.

I'm not sure if this helps, but I’ve personally stopped stressing about outcomes, "get rich quick" schemes, or being in the perfect moment.

The journey is what truly matters.

I use my own tools for consulting and eventually outsource myself as needed. If clients want to hire someone else, I don’t resist. I simply ask for two or three months’ salary for training and limited support afterward.

I’m not trying to build something worth millions to sell. I used to sell CRMs built on top of WordPress for a long time. Eventually, it evolved into a CRM I now use across several businesses. Over the years, I’ve also created numerous small tools that I’ve been using for over a decade—tools for tracking trends, education, and more.

I don’t aim to be in the top 5% of earners, just be in the middle for targeted niche is ok.

For me, freedom means working in "Pendulum mode"—six months of active client phases followed by six months of prototyping new ideas. That balance keeps me sane. No conflict of interests. Clients know I worked hard to kick off things, and productive than most other engineers in slow mode.

As for pressure of being update - I made a simple commitment to try new things 4-8 hours a week min. AI, ML, K8s, hyped programming languages. It was brutal at the beginning, and extremely…

The story about Jobs and Woz is super fascinating and also filled with many stories about how Jobs was unfair / a jerk etc.

I believe that neither would have been able to build Apple so successfully without the other. It was the perfect symbiosis.

There is an exciting piece in Naval's "How to get rich" podcast about exactly this model: The Builder + Seller framework

"The Silicon Valley model is a builder and seller

So, generally, the Silicon Valley startup model tends to work best. It’s not the only way, but it is probably the most common way, when you have two founders, one of whom is world class at selling, and one of whom is world class at building.

Examples are, of course, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak with Apple, Gates and Allen probably had similar responsibilities early on with Microsoft, Larry and Sergey probably broke down along those lines, although it’s a little different there because that was a very technical product delivered to end users through a simple interface."

https://nav.al/rich

Engineers are hired to deliver and produce value. Tooling can be a part of it but if you can outsource something which is not your source of income, you have to do it. Engineering time is more valuable.

I also know many startups and small companies investing 5 people and 6 months to get an observability platform up and running while they could just get datadog or new relic for half the price... and I don't get into account outages and updates to the platform.

I remember a recent uber blog post on how they moved from build tool A to build tool B and a couple of weeks later, 3000 people where laid off. It's important to spend development time on revenue streams.

This is some nice piece of advice
https://nav.al/build-a-team-that-ships

"Outsource everything that isn’t core. Resist the urge to pick up that last dollar. Founders do Customer Service."