#1309 - Naval Ravikant

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Two, one, boom, all right, we're live.
Thank you very much for doing this, man. I really appreciate it. I've been absorbing your information and listening to you talk for quite a while now, so it's great to actually meet you.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:12)
Thanks for having me.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:13)
My pleasure, my pleasure. You are one of the rare guys that is, you're a big investor, you're deep in the tech world, but yet you seem to have a very balanced perspective in terms of how to live life, as opposed to not just be entirely focused on success and financial success and tech investing, but rather how to live your life in a happy way.
That's an odd balance.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:45)
Yeah, I think the reason why people like hearing me is because it's like if you go to a circus and you see a bear, right, that's kind of interesting, but not that much. If you see a unicycle, that's interesting, but you see a bear on a unicycle, that's really interesting, right? So when you combine things you're not supposed to combine, people get interested. It's like Bruce Lee, right? Striking thoughts, philosophy, plus martial arts.
And I think it's because at some level, all humans are broad. We're all multivariate, but we get summarized in pithy ways in our lives. And at some deep level, we know that's not true, right? Every human basically is capable of every experience and every thought.
You're a UFC comedian, commentator, podcaster, but you're also more than that. You're also a father, lover, thinker, et cetera. So I like the model of life that the ancients had, the Greeks, the Romans, right? Where you would start out and when you're young, you're just like going to school, then you're going to war, then you're running a business, then you're supposed to serve in the Senate or the government, then you become a philosopher. This sort of this arc to life where you try your hand at everything.
And as one of my friends says, specialization is for insects, right? So everyone should just be able to do everything. And so I don't believe in this model anymore of trying to focus your life down on one thing. You've got one life, just do everything you're going to do.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:10)
I couldn't agree more. And I think that sometimes people find certain success in whatever the endeavor is, and then they think that that is their niche and they stick with it and they never change and they're almost out of fear.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:23)
Well, it's hard because there's an analogy around mountain climbing. Like if you find a mountain and you start climbing and you spend your whole life climbing it and you get, say, two thirds of the way, and then you see the peak is like way up there, but you're two thirds of the way up. You're still really high up. But now to go the rest of the way, you're gonna have to go back down to the bottom and look for another path.
Nobody wants to do that. People don't wanna start over.
And it's the nature of later in life that you just don't have the time.
So it's very painful to go back down and look for a new path, but that may be the best thing to do. And that's why when you look at the greatest artists and creators, they have this ability to start over that nobody else does. Like Elon will be called an idiot and start over doing something brand new that he supposedly is not qualified for. Or when Madonna or Paul Simon or U2 come out with a new album, their existing fans usually hate it because they've adopted a completely new style that they've learned somewhere else. And a lot of times, they'll just miss completely.
So you have to be willing to be a fool and kind of have that beginner's mind and go back to the beginning to start over. If you're not doing that, you're just getting older.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:29)
Yeah, I mean, I don't even know if it's willing to be a fool. It's just, to me, that the most exciting thing is to try to get better at something, to learn at things. I mean, it's really exciting when you just have incremental progress in something that you're completely new to.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:43)
Yeah, I live for the aha moment, that moment when you connect two things together that you hadn't connected together before, and it fits nicely and solidly, and it kind of helps form a steel framework of understanding in your mind that you can then hang other ideas off of. That's what I live for. It's like curiosity fulfilled. And it's what little children do too. My little son is always asking why, why, why, why, why? And I always try and answer him, and half the times I realize, actually, I don't really understand why. I just have a memorized answer for you, but that's not really understanding.