Hey friend!
I have collected some nuggets regarding common and important traps that people fall into. I sourced this wisdom from an Episode of the Joe Rogan Experience with Naval Ravikant, the Podcast of Naval Ravikant and the Shareholder's Annual Meeting of the Daily Journal Corporation where Charlie Munger answer some questions from the audience (it's very funny that almost all the questions are about life / philosophy instead of questions related to Daily Journal's operations).
I hope you will find this article valuable :)
🧠 Quotes (my favorite)
“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” - Nassim Taleb
“It is not greed that drives the world, but envy.” — Warren Buffett
"People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom." - Naval Ravikant
"Competition is for Losers" - Peter Thiel
👨 People
Naval Ravikant
Naval is the co-founder of AngelList and co-author of Venture Hacks. He has invested (early-stage) in companies like Uber, Twitter and FourSquare.
Charlie Munger
Billionaire investor. He is the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett. Munger also served as chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation from 1984 through 2011. He is also chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation, and a director of Costco Wholesale Corporation.
🐨 The Traps:
1) Working for (Material) Things as Rewards
2) "That's easy for you to say" Mindset
3) The Victim Mentality
4) The Competition Trap
📝 Notes
TRAP 1: Working for Material Things as Rewards.
- Outcome: Imprisonment.
“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” - Nassim Taleb
Picking Nuggets Reflection:
“The things you own, end up owning you.”- Chuck PalahniukThe main problem is that... People tend to upgrade their lifestyle when they make more money (Hedonic Treadmill)
- Overcome this Trap...
Ignore your peers...
Picking Nuggets Note:
Reading about the "Mimetic Desire" is extremely interesting. This was life changing for Peter Thiel. Here is a pretty insightful interview btw Shane Parrish and Luke Burgis on this topic - LinkBeware...
“It is not greed that drives the world, but envy.” — Warren Buffett
“What you really want is Freedom” - Naval Ravikant
The objective should be to Get to Retirement.
Retirement --> "When you stop sacrificing today for some imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete in and of itself."
How can you get there? There are 3 ways:
Passive Income +Frugal Life-style
Drop your costs to zero (you become a monk)
You work on something you love (is not about the money).
TRAP 2: The "That's easy for you (someone already wealthy) to say" Mindset
Picking Nuggets Note:
Naval explains his childhood and adversities. He even had to borrow 400$ to go to college.It is hard to become wealthy, but that's also (the fact that is hard and you struggle) the rewarding thing.
"Your real resume is just a catalogue of all your suffering"
"You have to do hard things anyway to create your own meaning in life"
- Naval Ravikant
"One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful." - Sigmund Freud
TRAP 3: The Victim Mentality
The "It's someone else's fault" mindset
"You can get out of it (change your circumstances). You just have to stop thinking it's everybody else's fault" - Naval Ravikant
- Antidote:
(Realize that) Life is a Single-player Game. It's all going on in your head.
What you think or believe -- shapes your reality
"It is your mind that creates the world" - Buddha
Reality is neutral. It has no judgements. To a tree, there is no concept of right or wrong.
Charlie Munger argues that Real Victimism exposed is important (positive) for improving Society -- But he also argues that this truth is also mixed with another truth --> "It’s very counterproductive for an individual to feel like a victim, even if he is." The best you can do, as an individual, is to adopt a survivor mindset, be cheerful and keep "plugging along".
Picking Nuggets Note:
Charlie has quite a story...
- His 8-year-old son Teddy died from leukemia.
- Was Financially Broke.
- Failed first marriage.
- He is blind in one eye.
- Her 2nd wife died tragically falling off the stairs at home.
But still.. he has an amazing attitude towards life. Far from resentfulness, envy and self-pity (which are all necessary ingredients to have a bad life).Also.. Charlie argues that you should be careful with politicians... because big part of their job is essentially to make you feel victimized!
Picking Nuggets Reflection:My formula for greatness is amor fati: That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backwards, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it….but love it.” - Nietzsche"A great man is hard on himself; a small man is hard on others." - Confucius
TRAP 4: The Competition Trap
"Competition is for Losers" - Peter Thiel
- The Issue (why we fall so easily into the Compeition Trap)...
"We are highly mimetic creatures" - Naval Ravikant
Picking Nuggets Note:
Our desires are influenced by the desires of other people whom we interact or follow. This phenomenon explains the First Trap!"If everyone around me is an artist... I want to be an artist" - Naval Ravikant
So...
"Be careful when you get caught up into these status games that you end up competing over things that aren't worth competing over." - Naval Ravikant
e.g./ Peter Thiel wanted to be a Law Clerk. Coz everyone in Law School wanted to be that for a Supreme Court Justice. He got rejected, and he went to business.
Picking Nuggets Note:
The Games...
Lesser Games --> Zero-sum Games (e.g./ All Status Games -- Other/s have to lose so that you can win)
Greater Games --> Positive-sum Games (e.g./ Business -- Everyone can win -- the Economy is a positive sum game)."Sometimes you just get trapped in the wrong game because you are competing."
- Naval Ravikant
- Best way to Escape Competition...
"The way to escape competition is to just be authentic to yourself. If you are fundamentally building and marketing something that is just an extension of who you are... No one can compete with you on that" - Naval Ravikant
Picking Nuggets Reflection:"If you have a guaranteed market of one, i.e. yourself, you are ahead of 99% of all entrepreneurs out there" - Tim Ferriss“Ideas don't come out fully formed , they only become clearer as you work on them . You just have to get started.” - Mark Zuckerberg
Something that has been useful to me is this idea of building something that I myself would love to consume. Even if I see other entrepreneurs already executing on that same concept.I just do something similar or shamelessly copycat them if they have better ideas. This might look like I'm getting into competition instead of escaping from it, but the thing is that as I execute the project I naturally give it my own spin over time. So when I just start the project, my idea it's also just starting. It is far from being a complete business idea. But as I work on the project... the idea gets more and more formed. And as it gets formed, you are slowly getting away from competition. Until the ideal scenario in which there is demand for your product/s and the market can't find it anywhere else other than thru you! That's the point where you become a Personal Monopoly, as one of my favorite writers David Perell would put it.
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So... how can it add value?
The PDF in Digital Format
Once you have watched the YouTube video or read this blogpost… Use this PDF to quickly revisit the concepts and let the knowledge soak in! You can also use it with this blogpost as a guide, in case that you need/want to refresh something specifically.
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The Slides in the PDFs are more logically ordered (per theme) than in the YouTube video, and also have way better resolution!
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Shortform is THE platform to go if you wanna find highly valuable nuggets (big ideas) from important non-fiction books. This is how I mainly learn from books. Beyond offering book summaries, they provide you with a full guide and synthesis of all the worthy ideas in a book. Personally, I love it because I can absorb book ideas at a faster pace compared to reading the entire books, and there is a deep analysis on each idea! (it is not shallowly explained, as it is the case in other platforms).
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So you will likely find many interesting book guides on Shortform! My plan is to read my personally filtered book guides (I have around 50-60 saved on my personal list on Shortform -- which I filtered based on whether I already knew about the author or the book was recommended by someone I trust). And if in a particular book guide I find super interesting-new ideas, I will also buy the book and read it entirely!
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The mark of a great (non-fiction) author...
“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
👨💻Other content I have found pretty cool and valuable lately...
Naval recently shared this video (That - Kapil Gupta) on Twitter. It is really insightful. Reminds me of Osho's "Life has no Purpose. And that's why is so beautiful. Life is the Purpose"
That - Kapil Gupta — www.youtube.com Written by Kapil Gupta, I am not Kapil Gupta@KapilGuptaMDhttps://www.kapilguptamd.com/Original Article: https://www.kapilguptamd.com/2018/03/21/that/Copyrigh...
A Micro Lesson on reframing stress and anxiety — www.youtube.com I show you several ways to reframe your thoughts to reduces stress and anxiety.
Joe Rogan on modern life and living a satisfying life |Joe Rogan | Steven Pressfield #1901 — www.youtube.com Joe Rogan and Steven Pressfield discuss the modern society and living a satifying life. Subscribe for daily content.Steven Pressfield is the author of numero...
I just heard the video below from timestamp (around) 1:00:00 to 1:30:00. I find it pretty useful to the functioning health of a society that Elon is increasing transparency on what they are doing at Twitter (and what previous Management did before he took control).
Twitter Files - Elon Musk Interview on #twittergate & Twitter's Government Manipulation... — www.youtube.com Chapters: 0:00 Pre - Elon Musk1:02:50 Elon Musk Joins In this video, Elon Musk & The Roundtable discussed how Twitter was manipulated the Government (both Re...
Until next time,
Julio xx
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(video) - The 4 Biggest Traps in Life that You Need to Get Out [Naval Ravikant, Charlie Munger]