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The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
- anm89 6y agoI think there are few people as cynical of self help and life advice literature as I am but I'd make an exception for Naval. Naval is an exceptionally wise person and speaks with amazing clarity. I think people would enjoy him if they took some time to listen to him talk.
- foogazi 6y agoWhat do you think sets him apart or what do you like about his message?
- browserface 6y agoOmg I find him insufferably self important and fake profound. What is he, the guru of silicon valley?
- firecall 6y agoAgreed.
- jitl 6y agoI think people take Naval much more seriously than he takes himself - but, I don’t follow him on Twitter (where he said he’s something of a troll) - that’s just the sense I got from talking to him.
- vthallam 6y agoI think people like me just like how he puts some complex things into simple words. Don't understand why people gets pissed off someone tweeting into the wild, like he never asked anyone to follow him or listen to him.
- browserface 6y agoMmm. I think part of it is I'm just sad it's not me. I'd love to have people hanging off my every word. But I also think most of his stuff is just ok, not great.
- ralphstodomingo 6y agoYou're in for a surprise: most of everything is shit[0] anyway. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
- browserface 6y agoWell I guess that takes the pressure off :p
- seppin 6y agoMy favorite is when he advised people on Joe Rogan to "not promote yourself and don't try to obtain celebrity". Podcasts are of course unpaid and solely made to promote the speakers.
- anm89 6y agoIf you have a message you could seek a platform without seeking celebrity.
- seppin 6y agoWhich is, of course, a basic contradiction. What "thought leader" has any significant platform without celebrity ?
- kjksf 6y agoIf podcasts were solely promotions of speakers, no one would listen. Mike Tyson or Bernie Sanders or any other guest on Joe Rogan's podcast doesn't need further promotion. If you're a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast you already are a celebrity. To state the obvious: people listen to Joe Rogan podcast because they are interested in what the guests have to say about things they are experts in and Joe Rogan is a good interviewer who asks good questions and lets the quests talk. Not to mention that interviews with people are just a subset of podcasts.
- seppin 6y ago> If podcasts were solely promotions of speakers, no one would listen. A podcast isn't solely self-promotion, that's like a TV show only with ads. Of course they give you "content" as well. But the purpose, from the perspective of the participants, is to grow your audience. Ie. increase your celebrity. Which is why I thought his advice to avoid celebrity while at the same time actively trying to obtain a greater level of it was p funny. > Mike Tyson or Bernie Sanders or any other guest on Joe Rogan's podcast doesn't need further promotion. Yet they go on for specific promotional purposes. Mike was returning to fighting, Bernie was in the middle of his campaign for President. > If you're a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast you already are a celebrity. Again, this has nothing to do with seeking further recognition / celebrity. > To state the obvious: people listen to Joe Rogan podcast because they are interested in what the guests have to say Ok you're just repeating the same thing over and over.
- deadalus 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-TZqOsVCNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-TZqOsVCNM
- luminaobscura 6y agothere is also a hip-hop version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZobf0MiWpE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZobf0MiWpE
- anm89 6y agoI think one thing he does a great job of is balancing concerns around monetary success and general life goals. I think people with advice tend to really emphasize one and demphasize or even demean the other. Like if I hear someone advocating for meditation it seems to frequently come along with some kind of money is evil message (certainly not always) Naval speaks about money sometimes and he tends to speak about it as a neutral tool. He also speaks about a wide range of other things and doesnt seem to need to wrap every other point into something financial. This is something I do t feel like I hear a lot of and he again just seems to have exceptional clarity on these types of issues.
- logicslave 6y agoYeah, I hate the self help/aphorism types, but his wisdom/breaking down of how to make wealth is great. Some of it is obvious, but he hammers in the point. I really dont think his ego is that bad
- vmurthy 6y agoSomewhat agree. One of the life hacks I have picked up (not necessary from him) is to look at the advice without the associations with the person. E.g., I really admire Warren Buffet and Bill Gates a lot but doesn't mean I all their ideas work for me. The same goes for people I dislike (some self-promoters ;)) but some of the advice from people I don't like has been actually helpful for me. So.. tl;dr : It's the message, not the medium :)
- Void_ 6y agoI'm a software engineer. I think he's made real impact on my life with his "don't inflate your lifestyle" advice.
- sbmthakur 6y agoThis is probably a trimmed down version: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1306249404156751872.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1306249404156751872.html
- pcj-github 6y agoA book of tweets? No thanks.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago> I think the smartest people can explain things to a child. If you can’t explain it to a child, then you don’t know it. It’s a common saying and it’s very true. This is really true. During covid, I think a lot of us parents are learning that with our children. The subjects we know really well we can explain to them in easy to understand language, even advanced topics like programming and math.
- ceilingcorner 6y agoLet's see if it hits all the Zeitgeist buzzwords: - Rational - Buddhism - Rational Buddhism - Meditation - Habits - Accountability - Happiness is a choice - Prioritize - Sapiens as a top 'recommended book' - And, to top it all off: Foreword by Tim Ferriss. Yep, I think we've covered them all.
- capnorange 6y agowhat's wrong with any of them?
- barry-cotter 6y agoMiddle brow dismissal. It’s like the people who dismiss productivity advice as all being the same when the reason it’s mostly the same is it works and the doing it is the hard part. > Paul Graham, News.YC’s moderator emeritus, says that “The defining quality of the middlebrow dismissal is that it’s a cache dump of the writer’s prejudices…” This probably explains why they’re so common. It’s natural to see any news story as confirmation of your existing prejudices—but it’s easy to read confirmation where it’s not there. http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissals-so-tempting/ http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissal...
- dang 6y agoWe started using the term "shallow dismissal" after a while (it appears in the site guidelines that way) because the word middlebrow is more triggering to people. It's more likely to land as a judgment on the person, where the word shallow is more able to bind to the comment, which is where it belongs.
- ceilingcorner 6y agoNothing, but the actual engagement with any of these ideas is approximately 0%. In a work presenting itself as the collected Almanack of Wisdom by a Wise Man, one would hope to see more than pithy collection of buzzwords and advice, all centered on "Getting rich." If the primary reason you're interested in Buddhist techniques is to make money, I think you may have missed the point. If Silicon Valley (the satirical TV show) had a book version, it would look something like this.
- marvindanig 6y agolet me see. download a PDF. download an ePub. or buy a paperback. or a hardback. hm. why just the lifeless artifacts for the disk or the dead-tree? why can't we read the almanack on the web like a clean blogpost or a series of short chapters? edit: we can. it was down low on the scroll on my mobile. tx!
- ceilingcorner 6y agohttps://www.navalmanack.com/almanack-of-naval-ravikant/table-of-contents https://www.navalmanack.com/almanack-of-naval-ravikant/table...
- thewojo 6y agoNo doubt Naval is a smart guy but the cult of Naval has always struck me as weird/off putting
- SkyMarshal 6y agoYeah, the problem is if you’ve read all the same books as Naval, then you know where much of his tweets and ‘wisdom’ are coming from, but he never credits the source, instead implicitly passing it off as his own. By way of comparison, one of his idols, Nassim Taleb, enthusiastically credits the sources of any thought or idea that is not his own, but which has informed and enriched his own original ideas. He makes that distinction clear in his tweets, papers, and books, the latter two extensively throughout the text, footnotes, and appendices. It would be cool and admirable if Naval were using his platform to similarly boost his sources by crediting them more, and showing how their ideas have informed his own. Rather than commingling their and his ideas and implicitly taking credit for all of it. That his ‘cult’ or followers don’t seem to see this suggests they either haven’t read extensively enough to recognize the sources, or they have and simply gravitate to someone like Naval confirming things they already believe.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ralphstodomingo 6y agoThis is really valid criticism which not only Naval is guilty, but most of the other intellectual personas on Twitter too. I've always been interested not just in the ideas per se (which are often useful, no doubt) but also how they came to be, and I've had more than one instance where I wanted to trace back where they adapted the idea and I can't find it that easily. That said, it may be the medium's fault, as the inherent character limit only allows for so much information that references and relevant information are considered way lesser in terms of priority... which in turn I think says something about the nature of ideas themselves.
- rvn1045 6y agoI don't think a lot of people realize that Taleb's ideas are from Mandelbrot. So he's guilty of this too.
- thewarrior 6y ago“ Your summary says “Productize yourself”—what does that mean? “Productize” and “yourself.” “Yourself ” has uniqueness. “Productize” has leverage. “Yourself” has accountability. “Productize” has specific knowledge. “Yourself ” also has specific knowledge in there. So all of these pieces, you can combine them into these two words.” It’s telling that this is what passes for wisdom in Silicon Valley. You’d be better off reading some Aristotle.
- SkyMarshal 6y agoYou would certainly become a deeper, more authentic, and more original person filling your mind with long-form philosophical reasoning then a collection of pop Twitter aphorisms.
- oezi 6y agoCitation needed
- SkyMarshal 6y agoI’m not citing anyone, that comment was clearly an expression of opinion. Feel free to disagree.