LIFE
Naval in the title
If you're wondering who Naval is well, this is what Wikipedia has to say about him “Naval Ravikant is an Indian American entrepreneur and investor. Naval is the co-founder, chairman and former CEO of AngelList. He has invested in over 100 companies including Uber, FourSquare, Twitter, SnapLogic, Yammer, and Clearview AI.”
But if you ask him, he would say “I’m a hero among young male geeks :P”.
In my entire fucking life, I’ve never taken notes about anything until I met this gentleman. He drops Wisdom bomb, every minute. Every sentence.
I found him through AngleList, it’s his startup and what it does is quite simple. It’s is a platform for startups, where you can hunt for talent, apply to be an investor and also hunt for products. (If you’re looking for a job, it’s a great website to look for)
I’ll be dropping some of his pearls of wisdom here.
1. Specialization is for insects, you got one life — do everything you can.
Someone once told me YOLO and I thought it meant “You only love Oreos”. It took my dumbass brain light-years to finally understand that it meant “You only live once”. The point is we human beings are no insects and we should be doing all the things we can while we are still alive. We have to explore and start picking up new things and get out of our comfort zone and experience things. The problem is that people don’t wanna start over, once you’re 2/3 of a mountain you don’t want to start over. That may be painful to go down and floor for another path but that may be the best thing to do. That’s why artists, authors, entrepreneurs are ready to start over at any given point.
2. Read.
Naval was lucky that he started reading at his very young age unlike me. And he says Reading for completion is vanity metrics, read to satisfy your curiosity. He doesn’t keep a tack of books read or completed it’s all about understanding concepts and you don’t have to complete a book or read it in sequential order and also read multiple books at a time, don't wait for the completion of one book to start another. Remember during school and college days we used to have 6–8 subjects and each of them with their own book and we had no problem keeping up apply the same here. A Book For Every Mood. The key is to have a real variety. Books on different subjects, and different styles. some more playful and light, others more dense and demanding and also have them in various formats Kindle, physical and Audio. (This app has all the books for free check it out.)
If the book is getting a little boring, I’ll skip ahead. Sometimes I’ll start reading a book in the middle because some paragraph caught my eye and I’ll just continue from there, and I feel no obligation whatsoever to finish the book. — Naval Ravikant
Hackerrank has a great blog post about Naval’s Reading Tips?
3. Automation.
We all have seen talks about how automation will kill jobs and many of them will be left unemployed and how we should be worried about AI.
When electricity came out it put a lot of people out of job.
we have to remember that there is no finite number of jobs. Automation usually creates a better job and more creative jobs. Who would have ever thought that youtube, podcast, playing games online and reacting to videos could be a job?. Automation automates the mundane and boring tasks and makes way for more creative jobs. So yeah automation is not a bad thing.
The question is how quickly is that transition happening? the problem is not the jobs and unemployment numbers rising up. it’s education how quickly can you learn.
I would pay for Naval and Elon to talk about AI.
4. Meditation.
His way of meditating is the way to go, I’ve been doing it for a couple of days now and I kinda enjoy it. The secret is not to follow any technique or to concentrate on your breath. The key is not doing anything, Not focusing on your breath or using any type of technique at all. You just sit there — eyes closed — and lets your thoughts come and go as they please.
When I heard this, I thought of regular meditation as a form of vacation for the brain that lasts for as long as you meditate, because through focusing on your breathing, for example, you can stop all the fuss in your brain and acquire peace.
Naval’s form of meditation, on the other hand, appeared to be as a lifelong vacation, once you get to that point, where you are at peace with your entire past, your entire consciousness.
I would suggest you try this, I’m doing it for 60 minutes and it’s been amazing.
Some of his Quotes
“If you’re smart, you should be able to figure out how to be happy. Otherwise, you’re not that smart.”
“A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought — they must be earned.”
“You don’t get rich by spending your time to save money. You get rich by saving your time to make money.”
“Internal happiness is reward from being in flow. Create, meditate, love, play. Clears the mind & leaves us in peace.”
“The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order but their importance is in the reverse.”
“All I want is peace, because peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion..”
“Every man has 2 lives, and the second starts when he realizes he has just one.”
“Meditation is the art of doing nothing. You cannot do meditation. By definition, if you’re doing something, you’re not in meditation. Meditation is a state you’re in when you’re not doing anything — physically, mentally, or consciously. You’re just making no effort. You’re literally being completely still, physically and mentally, inside and out.”
I still have a lot to talk about but I would suggest you go and follow him on Twitter or Instagram, He has all his wisdom in short video and tweets.
I promise he won't disappoint as I do with my blogs.
