Don’t partner with cynics and pessimists; their beliefs are self-fulfilling.To create things, you have to be a rational optimist. Rational in the sense that you have to see the world for what it really is. And yet you have to be optimistic about your own capabilities, and your capability to get things done.We’re genetically hardwired to be pessimists. Adapting for modern society means overriding your pessimism, and taking slightly irrationally optimistic bets because the upside is unlimited. If you start the next SpaceX, or Tesla, or Uber, you can make billions of dollars of value for society

Partner With Rational Optimists

The internet connects everybody. That is its superpower. So, you want to use that. You can find your audience for your product, or your talent, and skill no matter how far away they are.It allows you to scale any niche obsession. It could be like people who collect snakes, to like people who like to ride hot air balloons, to people who like to sail around the world by themselves, just one person on a craft.You can go out on the internet, and you can find your audience. And build a business, , and build wealth, and make people happy just uniquely through the internet.

The Internet Has Massively Broadened Career Possibilities

When you switch industries, you’re starting over from scratch.Every time you reset, every time you wander out of where you built your network, you’re going to be starting from scratch. You’re not going to know who to trust. They’re not going to know to trust you.When you have been doing business with somebody, you’ve been friends with somebody for ten years, twenty years, thirty years, it just gets better and better because you trust them so easily.Get some traction. Get purchase, and don’t lose it. Gain some initial traction, and never fall back, just keep ratcheting up, and up.

Returns come from compound interest in iterated games

The three-part checklist that you cannot compromise on. You need someone high-energy because the world is full of smart, lazy people.It’s not meant to say someone is smart, someone else is stupid. But it’s more that everyone is smart at different things.And then energy, a lot of times people are unmotivated for a specific thing, but they’re motivated for other things.Then high integrity is the most important because otherwise if you’ve got the other two, what you have is you have a smart and hard working crook, who’s eventually going to cheat you.

Pick Partners With Intelligence, Energy and Integrity

Self-esteem is the reputation that you have with yourself

All returns in life come from compound interest in long-term games. Whether it’s goodwill, or love, or relationships, or money.If you want to be successful, you have to work with other people. And you have to figure out who can you trust, and who can you trust over a long, long period of time, that you can just keep playing the game with them, so that compound interest, and high trust will make it easier to play the game, and will let you collect the major rewards, which are usually at the end of the cycle.

Play Long-Term Games With Long-Term People

Almost everything that’s in your house, in your workplace, and on the street used to be technology at one point in time. There was a time when oil was a technology, that made J.D. Rockefeller rich. There was a time when cars were technology, that made Henry Ford rich.You want to figure out which one of those things you can provide for society, that it does not yet know how to get, but it will want, that’s natural to you, and within your skillset, within your capabilities.And then you have to figure out how to scale it. So, everybody can have one.

Give Society what it doesn't know how to get

Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion. It’s not by going to school for whatever is the hottest job, it’s not for going into whatever field investors say is the hottest.Specific knowledge is found by observation. You almost have to look back on your own life and see what you’re actually good at.Your specific knowledge is observed and often observed by other people who know you well and revealed in situations rather than something that you come up with.

Arm Yourself With Specific Knowledge

When you’re competing with people it’s because you’re copying them. It’s because you’re trying to do the same thing. But every human is different. Don’t copy.No one can compete with you on being you. It’s that simple. And so the more authentic you are to who you are, and what you love to do, the less competition you’re gonna have. And normally that would have been useless advice pre-internet. Post-internet you can turn that into a career.

Escape competition through authenticity

The best way to arm with specific knowledge is just to follow your own obsession.It’s important that one not start assembling things too deliberately because you do want to pick things where you are a natural. Everyone is a natural at something.And then there are probably multiple things you’re natural at because personalities and humans are very complex. So, we want to be able to take the things that you are natural at and combine them so that you automatically, just through sheer interest and enjoyment, end up top 25% or top 10% or top 5% at a number of things.

You can’t be too deliberate about assembling specific knowledge

It’s on the bleeding edge of technology, on the bleeding edge of art, on the bleeding edge of communication.Specific knowledge is highly specific to the situation, it’s specific to the individual, it’s specific to the problem, and it can only be built as part of a larger obsession, interest, and time spent in that domain.

Specific Knowledge Is Highly Creative or Technical

Compilation of ideas from Naval Ravikant's tweetstorm on wealth creation in the modern era

Specific Knowledge Is Highly Creative or Technical

Similar ideas to Specific Knowledge Is Highly Creative or Technical

Transfer learning concept

The Most Important Thing Is . . . Knowing What You Don’t Know

Heuristic Computing