You're Going To Die
The inspiring wisdom of Naval Ravikant
This is Naval Ravikant. He teaches people how to become wealthy, happy and fulfilled. The routes Naval recommends are the opposite of the way many of us live our lives. I wish I had come across his writing sooner.
Here are 3 takeaways from his excellent book and how I plan to apply them:
Life Is A Single-Player Game
The key tactic here is avoiding zero-sum competition for status. We attach so much importance to ‘winning’, to beating others, but for what ultimate purpose?
The most sobering tool for gaining the required perspective here is remembering that, inevitably, you are going to die. Whether that’s today, next month, or a long time in the future you will meet your end. After which, what will really be important? Even those with the most spectacular lives are forgotten in 3 generations.
Just as the world didn’t know of you before your existence, it will not know of you afterward. Your life is but the fleeting light of a firefly one summer night amidst the millennia of the universe. So then, why choose to spend your time point-scoring?
I have serious work to do on zero sum status games. In particular, the burning need I seem to have to always be ‘proving myself’ to someone. I see this now as particularly futile, as it’s often an imagined authority and an entirely subjective scale I’m operating within. I hope, going forward, that I can settle on pursuits more aligned to my own purpose, whenever I work out what that is.
I do, at least, use social media a lot less than before. The dopamine rush of the likes and engagement, the never-ending availability of cute dogs and trick shots. It’s easy to see how folks get sucked into serving the algorithm and it’s worthless status game - some of the best minds on the planet are heavily incentivized to make you want to.
“Jealousy faded away because I don’t want to be anyone else. I’m perfectly happy being me. It’s just there are no social rewards for it.”
Naval Ravikant
Every Desire Is A Chosen Unhappiness
Naval says that desire is making a contract with yourself to be unhappy until you get the thing you’ve identified that you want. It’s like putting on a tight pair of shoes so you can feel relief when you take them off.
Two phrases Naval suggests to eliminate for a better life:
I’ll be happy when…
No, you won’t. We spend our lives focusing on the next thing we want. The new car, the promotion, the new house, the vacation, the weekend. All under the illusion that it’s going to propel us past the final hurdle between us and perfect bliss.
Instead, when we get there we switch our attention to the next level up, the next rung on whatever ladder we’ve created for ourselves to climb. Thus we live all of our life in anticipation of some happy future. Only at the end do we realize that we have created a life that is no more than a prelude to our death.
Should.
The word should. It’s always connected to either guilt or social programming, neither of which should be driving your actions. If you listen closely enough, ‘should’ carries the feeling that you’re doing something that you don’t want to do. Well, don’t do it then!
On chasing the next ‘thing’, I’ve just about been able to beat it on material items. Our family instigated a ‘lifestyle lock’ about 8 years ago which has prevented expenses spiraling alongside income growth. That has provided a really solid foundation for preventing excessive thirst for material possessions and likely saved us from a monster mortgage - all of which buys us flexibility if and when we change course with careers or geography. We will be holding double hard onto this now, recognizing that true happiness turns out to be a state of not desiring anything at all.
I’ve been a big victim of ‘should’ in my life. I’ve always been a big follower of rules and paths and somewhat of a slave to society’s expectations. Once, I even got engaged because all of our friends kept telling us we should, only to discover afterwards that neither of us really wanted to be. Fortunately, we were able to navigate it to an amicable end.
I entered my career with the advice of ‘continue to do exactly what you’re asked until told otherwise’. Clearly I took it to heart as, thus far, I’ve designed a career around whatever was needed by the company I was working for. A cork, bobbing around in the corporate ocean. This has worked out well for me on many of society’s measures - but I owe some serious thought to what I *want* to do rather than what I *should* do.
“To me, the real winners are the ones who step out of the game entirely, who don’t even play the game, who rise above it. Those are the people who have such internal mental self-control and self-awareness, they need nothing from anybody else.”
Naval Ravikant
The Three Pillars Of Fulfillment
When you’re young you have time. You have health, but you have no money.
When you’re middle-aged you have money and you have health, but you have no time.
When you’re old, you have money and time, but you have no health.
So, the goal should be to achieve a state where you have all three. There are a few different ways to do this.
For the young, it’s accruing a large amount of money. There are two problems with this:
To sustain you through the rest of your life you need a much bigger pile of money than the old person, assuming standard life expectancy.
If you are successful enough in this era then you fall into the trap described above. Once you have $1M, you want $2M…then $5M…and so on. Always a next level to chase in pursuit of status, taking your time away.
For the old, it’s finding a way to hang onto your health as long as possible. Also two problems with this:
Health in old age isn’t a short-term project that you can pick up when your retire. You need to have established and invested in it right through the most busy (middle) part of your life.
Even with focused and sustained effort, deterioration will work against you as you get older. The probabilities get us all in the end.
So, the best chances of completing the trifecta fall to folks (like me) in the middle part of their lives. Of course, despite having ‘being old enough to know better’ working in our favor, most of us remain victims of the status pursuit. We often do so at the expense of our health, exacerbated by our already-decreasing powers of strength and recovery.
Two things I aim to do here to maximize my chances of fulfillment:
Wrestle myself free of the status games and work on my happiness skills, realizing that some of things I have pursued in my life to date will not be the answers I’m looking for.
Double-down commitment to health knowing that even if I fail in the first point, that I’ll have the best possible chance of maintaining the trifecta into old age, if I get there.
I visited my parents in Scotland a couple of weeks ago. My dad hasn’t left the house much in the 5 years since I’ve last been there, which I always imagined to be a tough way to exist. I asked him about it. He said to me that he was living the retirement he always wanted. He gets up early, goes to the garden, watches the birds, reads his books, watches TV then goes to bed.
I struggled to reconcile this with my own version of happiness. However, between Naval’s definition of happiness being the lack of desire for anything, maybe he’s one who has it right.
“By the time most people realize they already had enough money, they have lost most of their time and their health”
Naval Ravikant
Applying someone else’s world view to your own unchecked assumptions is a powerful way to look at your life. Have you looked up from the status games recently to examine how your 3 pillars are looking? There could be an exciting new path waiting for you.