Naval Ravikant: Tweets That'll Help Improve Your Perspective on Reality

something we can all agree on is that the bar for excellence in this day and age is declining further and further.

no, it’s not a fast transition to mediocrity.

but a slow, and gradual one in which lower baselines are becoming more and more normalized.

and with this realization, we can also acknowledge that there are individuals who rise above this baseline.

those select few who are amazing role models, and who’s thinking can mold us into individuals that are greater than we are.

we know of authentic individuals.

we know of the great visionaries of our time.

we also know of those individuals who are polymaths.

but one particular individual has all three of these traits at once, that completely stands out over everyone else.

he’s the type of individual that when he opens his mouth, you can’t help but stop what you’re doing and listen to what he has to say with full focus.

and you’re probably wondering, how can such a person have this much of an impact on someones thinking?

if I had to give an answer to this, it would be the amount of wisdom and lessons they are not only able to recite in theory to others, but embody fully.

and for Naval Ravikant, his lessons are something to not only be aware of, but embody as well through action.

if you don’t know who he is, he is an entrepreneur, investor, and tech philosopher. he was an angel investor early on involving Twitter, Notion, and Uber.

he co-founded AngelList in 2010, and also co-founded Epinions in 1999. so it’s safe to say he developed skin in the game in the business world and developed some lessons in that domain.

connecting everything together, if it’s one thing I can say about him as a person, he is someone you need, not want, but NEED to learn from.

his singular Tweets alone, are lessons that can improve your life drastically, so do pay attention.

also, there’s one final thing I want to make clear before we get to the bread and butter into diving into his mind:

this will possibly be my final rendition or article on Naval Ravikant, as we’ve pretty much extracted some of the most valuable lessons in previous articles, you can check them out here, and here.

and if Naval ever reads one of my articles fully, I just wanted to say, thank you for everything you’ve done. you’ve changed my life and thinking for the better.

i cannot give you enough credit for the work you’ve done, so once again, thank you for your wisdom to share with the world.

exactly 3:37 PM as I write this. it’s way too early to drink some warm tea and take my magnesium.

but I’m fully dialed in. wired earbuds playing some classic C418 instrumentals in my ear, flushing out any noise while I work in the library. his personal book, the Almanack, is out. tabs open full of notes across his podcasts, videos, and tweets.

i’ve studied the dude for more than a year now, and it’s incredibly striking that most have never came across his work or infamous tweet storm.

but you’re the exception.

and by the end of reading this, you’ll have newfound knowledge to become greater in your own life.

you know the drill, do approach all of this with an open mind.

let’s get into it.

i’ve posted this before on one of my notes, and it’s something I genuinely love fully, even live by.

here’s the issue we see today, many people are trying to over-optimize their life for work, focus, and productivity.

you see it yourself, it’s absolutely everywhere on social media.

people want to draft a one hundred step morning routine packaged in a how-to video, that if you follow each intricate step one by one, you’ll have a great day.

i call BS on that honestly. because you can become prone to perfectionism, and if one tiny step or part of your schedule is messed up, you end up self-sabotaging.

that’s what I’ve observed when it comes to over-optimizing your life, and why most people fail in being consistent.

but the thing people need to realize is this:

simplicity scales, complexity fails.

living a simple life always wins. and for Naval, the blueprint is something even a six year old can understand.

it’s as simple as those sixteen habits he listed.

movement of the body, our optimal state of being. easing the mind through meditation, calming us into a parasympathetic state of relaxation.

the of feeding your knowledge base through reading, creating, writing, reflecting.

the art of growing your intellectual mind, through ignoring society, loving, seeking truth. building your financial base as money runs society through selling, investing, and owning.

while also contrasting on the other habits of avoiding calamities like addiction through gambling, vices, etc.

avoiding debt where you’re smart with your money, avoiding the path of least resistance, avoiding media like polarizing news and short form content. the list goes on.

and all these habits touch on nourishing three crucial principles of our lives, the mind, the body, and the soul.

it’s honestly beautiful and there’s no other simpler or better blueprint as this, it doesn’t get any better.

ponder on this blueprint today, embody it.

that’s what Naval would want.

“only a slave quantifies it’s existence through productivity.”

he speaks to those in the business world but this applies to life as well.

your social circles matter, the people you’re surrounded with truly determine who you are as a person and the trajectory you’re going down.

the more you’re around certain people for long periods of time, you would notice that you would naturally adopt their lingo, their beliefs, and the behaviors they follow.

of course this varies from person to person.

but it’s a common pattern we see in everyday life, coined in psychology as, social contagion.

you know of the saying:

“you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

yep, that has psychological backing, and it’s never been more true, especially in the age of social media.

so if you naturally surround yourself with cynics and pessimists, their standards of thinking eventually become your baseline as you would naturally assimilate to those same beliefs.

looking at the cup half empty would become normalized in group dynamics.

and what Naval says is to avoid this like the plague.

what Naval also mentions which is absolutely crucial is that their beliefs are self-fulfilling.

crucial to understand, and in psychology, this refers to something called, the self-fulfilling prophecy.

it describes that any prediction or expectation, no matter if its good or bad, becomes true just because you expect it to.

regarding those same cynical and pessimistic beliefs, even though they could are objectively false, they could become reality through your actions and the evidence you feed your mind.

avoid cynics and pessimists like the plague.

surround yourself with those that genuinely support you, those that cheer you for your wins. surround yourself with people that aren’t afraid to challenge you, to help you grow. life will be much more pleasant if you do so.

“if you look at the people in your circle and you don't get inspired, then you don't have a circle. you have a cage." - Nipsey Hussle

a lot of people like to preach expertise in one discipline and one discipline only.

this is great and all to be exceptional in one lane.

but if that’s all you know, you can only see through life in one perspective, and that is a very limiting lens to enjoy all the other gifts of life.

in a generation where we have advantages everywhere and infinite leverage, generalists are ruling the world over specialists.

those who can interconnect different disciplines together tend to produce the most amazing ideas and outcomes.

for example, when you’re writing, if you’ve studied disciplines like microeconomics, psychology, and game theory, you can connect all three together which can break down a complex topic into simplistic parts.

you can explain how a business makes decisions through game theory, the psychology behind different markets, and use concepts from microeconomics to explain real life interactions.

you would honestly realize that life is like an interconnected web of ideas.

everything quite literally branches together. generalists and polymaths alike understand this, and they’re doubling down as an advantage to fly past everyone else.

my personal philosophy on studying different disciplines is this:

i would much rather have many solutions to one problem, rather than one solution to many problems.

this philosophy in itself just makes life & problem solving a lot more fun, and you cannot outcompete someone who is having fun.

study microeconomics to understand individual and business choices in specific markets, study game theory to understand decision making and opportunity cost.

study psychology to understand real world interactions and human nature. study persuasion to learn how to sell and convince people. study ethics to understand morality and benevolence.

study mathematics to understand numbers and solve complex problems, study computers to understand coding and the backend of technology you’re using daily.

i urge you to go down rabbit holes to the point where you’re studying until 3 AM. be a student of life across different disciplines, see the web that connects absolutely everything together.

you won’t regret it.

ever heard of the saying, “in a gold rush, sell shovels?”

this is our current generation and the state of self-help industries.

instead of everyone selling genuine value out of good will, people are looking to monetize off of your attention for self-gain.

people are selling you tools, AI apps (yuck), services, overcomplicated PDFs, roadmaps, info-products, the list goes on.

and the crazy part is, most will continue to buy these same products expecting it to be the next holy grail, only for it to be the same generic slop sold to you in the same formatting, just in a different font.

the truth is:

most won’t ever follow through completely on these products. it’s not guaranteed that the person buying in will get the help they need.

and the creators still exploit this, targeting the naive and uninformed for an elaborate financial scheme that feeds their pockets.

“instead of helping you get rich, I’ll sell you a course on how to get rich!”

yikes.

that’s essentially the mentality behind most offers nowadays, it’s really sad.

there’s another truth I want you to realize as a result of this industry:

getting rich quick leaves you prone to losing all that wealth in equivalent. you can gain a million dollars in a day the same way you can lose a million dollars in a day.

for this realization, awareness is only enough. see the games that are being played, so that you don’t fall into this trap yourself.

so if someone tells you that they can help you make $100,000 in less than a week, and tell you to pay them first, they’re probably lying.

don’t play stupid games, and you won’t win stupid prizes.

this one is one of the more important sections in this article, so do pay attention.

what Naval mentions with school, politics, sports, and games is zero-sum games.

for every winner, there has to be some loser. to rise, someone must fall.

you see this in school where students are competing for high GPAs, to get into prestigious universities or ivy leagues.

in politics you see constant debates on who’s right or wrong, playing reputation games, and fighting to reach positions of authority.

in sports, you compete to dominate against the opposing team, scoring more points than the other. games fall under this umbrella and that’s self-explanatory.

for the true rewards, you’re playing positive-sum games, where everyone is a winner. these are the games you want to play.

of course there’s exceptions with school and sports, these can give you lifechanging opportunities if you’re someone that’s genuinely exceptional.

but in general, when you focus on the priceless, intangible values of love, health through fitness, equanimity which essentially means internal peace, knowledge, and wealth, life becomes more pleasurable.

wealth in this case also doesn’t refer to money, it can refer to an abundance of the other true rewards. wealth in love, in knowledge, in peace, and in health.

you can only attain these true rewards through deviating from the herd.

if you’re following the crowd or your competition, you’ll get the same results as them.

if you break away and look within, doing the inner work, you’ll outcompete everyone else because you’re not caged by external perceptions or opinions.

the focus is on you until the focus is on you.

play positive sum games, then everyone else wins. your wins and growth will benefit everyone else. keep that in mind.

no words can describe how much I love this tweet.

it genuinely describes the major problem we have in our society, and solutions that can fix this in absolute simplicity.

the modern mind is extremely overstimulated.

in an age of abundance we weren’t evolved for so much information flooding our brains that were wired for scarcity.

our dopamanergic pathways get flooded with so much artificial dopamine from short form content, entertainment media, and notifications that we end up fogging our brains to oblivion.

the mundane ends up becoming completely overlooked.

your phone ends up getting all the attention in your everyday life.

and as for the modern body, most western societies are being fed absolute slop food. we’ve normalized consuming processed food, preservatives, artificial foods and ingredients, GMOs, things that were never supposed to be naturally consumed for all of history.

i mean look at your classic American grocery store for example, it genuinely sickens me looking at the shelves that are being sold to us in the name of money.

most people deprive themselves of nutrients, vitamins, and antioxidants that are necessary for long-term health, while overindulging in absolute slop.

it’s horrible to think about. no wonder why so many people have health issues and the pharmaceutical industry is booming.

i’ve referenced this quote before from Naval and i’ll say it again:

“the modern devil is cheap dopamine.”

and the way to escape this modern devil is three things:

meditating, exercising, and fasting.

meditation as a means to lower your baseline dopamine levels and detach from the abundance of modern stimulation.

exercising as a means to reach an optimal state of health and reclaim mental clarity that vices cannot replicate.

fasting as a means to nourish the soul spiritually and remove temptations from desires of the modern world.

and if you practice all three, consistently?

you’ll deviate from modernity. including overstimulation and under nourishing the body and soul.

these three means of deviation not only put you in the top 1%, but the top 1% of the 1%.

let this be a wake up call for you.

there was a lot of wisdom and lessons from Naval to unpack here, so we’ll go ahead and refresh your memory:

a simple blueprint to prosperity - fast, lift, sprint, stretch, and meditate. build, sell, write, create, invest, and own. read, reflect, love, seek truth, and ignore society. make these habits. avoid debt, jail, addiction, disgrace, shortcuts, and media.

don’t partner with cynics and pessimists - the beliefs of other people, especially those who look at the cup half empty, can become infectious. stay away from such people if you want to rise further and further, but instead, surround yourself with people that’ll help you grow and challenge you.

study an array of disciplines - generalists are ruling the world over specialists. interconnecting and studying many different disciplines yields different outcomes, rather than focusing on one singular discipline.

getting rich quick is a facade - know the games that are being played in our generation. getting rich quick is an illusion that directs you towards quick financial destruction. awareness is the key to avoid falling into this trap.

play positive sum games - play games where everyone wins, avoid playing games where you have to put another person down. value the true rewards, wealth, knowledge, love, fitness, and equanimity should be prioritized.

deviate from modernity - the modern mind is overstimulated, the modern body is overfed, and the modern soul is undernourished. meditation, exercise, and fasting are the antidotes, bringing in natural dopamine we naturally evolved for.

i hope you took away something new to learn here. don’t let this information go to waste, to collect dust in your mental library.

embody and apply each concept here, keep them alive and awareness at the back of your mind.

and most importantly, do what you will.

if you loved this article, you’ll love my other articles here, give them a read: