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Hey everyone, it's Alex from Alex and Books, and you're listening to The Reader's Journey, the podcast that takes you on a journey to meet amazing authors, discover brilliant books, and learn valuable lessons along the way. Now, let's get started. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Reader's Journey podcast. Today we have Eric Jorgensen, the author of The Almanac of Naval Ravikant. Eric, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.
I'm happy to be here, Alex and Books. So I think a great place to start would be if you could share the origin story of this book, because it's like a fascinating story of how this book came to life. Of course. Yeah, it's kind of a it's kind of a happy accident. I wasn't really looking for a side project and I wasn't really looking for a book, but I just heard this kind of incredible podcast.
podcast that Naval did on the knowledge project with Shane Parrish. And I listened to this thing twice and it taught me a lot. And I was just thinking about how, uh, kind of ephemeral the medium of podcasting is. And it's, it's hard to discover those ideas and it's hard to pass them on to people. And, you know, for as popular as podcasting is, it's still not as universal or as timeless, uh, as books. Um,
And so I started thinking about what it would be like to kind of curate some of Naval's knowledge into a book and turn it into a different medium. And it kind of dawned on me that there was so much raw material out there. I've been following Naval for 10 years. I've seen his Twitter account, his talks, his interviews, his blog posts, everything. And that some of my favorite books had been
sort of created by, you know, people, editors who were compiling the works of others. You know, poor Charlie's almanac is one of those, the letters of Warren Buffett by my friend, Max Olson, you know, um, uh, and Peter Bevelin's whole career really like all of his books is seeking wisdom and Sherlock Holmes, you know, he's kind of dissecting and rearranging preexisting pieces, um, in these kind of ways that are brilliant and helpful for the reader. And so, um,
I just kind of put this idea out in the world that I thought of a stupid pun called the book of Novology and, uh, just tweeted it one night and Naval had retweeted it. And I woke up to find that 5,000 people were like, this is a great idea. I want this, please do it. And I'm like, Oh, well, I guess we're committed to this thing and we're on the road now. No taking it back. So I thought it was going to take, you know, three to six months. And three years later, here we are. Yeah.
Wow. That's such an awesome story. Like you just tweeted out, someone should make this book and the ball is like, okay, let's do it. And then, you know, that's just the power of the Twitter right there. Yeah. It's the power of Twitter and, and his, you know, support went a long way. And, um, you know, knowing that a crowd of people were interested in it and, uh,
It was kind of validation of the idea on the one hand, but it was also instant pressure for me to follow through and continue in it. I'm certainly better for it because I held myself to a much higher standard of understanding and organization and polish and design, knowing that there was kind of a hungry mob sitting there waiting for me to be done.
Yeah, I just love that serendipity. You have this tweet, you know, some Naval said yes, and then you created this wonderful book. And before we dive into, you know, both of us like live on Twitter. So we know who like Naval is, and we kind of worship him. But for listeners who don't know who he is, can you just give like a two minute background of who he is?
Yeah, Naval is pretty well known in the tech scene. Um, so in the Silicon Valley world and kind of increasingly for his, his Twitter and podcasting, um, but really, you know, he's, he's been a tech founder and investor for most of his career. Um, so he had a successful company kind of in the, you know, 2000s era and now another one with AngelList, um,
So if you're anywhere in the startup world, I'm sure you've heard of AngelList, but it is like the, you know, capital and jobs platform that a lot of the startups run on kind of increasingly around the world. And, yeah.
Naval has invested in Uber and Twitter and Postmates and Notion and hundreds of other companies. He's a pretty prolific investor and got into the cryptocurrency game pretty early, too. He's got followers from all of these different industries.
interest pools, I guess, and, um, kind of brings everybody together. He's prolific on Twitter and shares a lot increasingly as he's kind of, um, you know, reached those levels of success materially. He's like turning a little philosophical and reading more about happiness and, um,
Self-examination and sharing what he's learning about that practice as well. And it's kind of an interesting merger of those two things that, you know, everybody wants in some part, which is how do I build wealth and how do I build happiness?
Yeah, it's like everyone wants money and wisdom, which is like he seems to be able to achieve both areas. Go figure. Everybody wants to be rich and happy. Yeah, so that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today. So in the book and what I think Naval is best known for is for his how to get rich while getting lucky thread and that tweet storm he created.
And so perhaps there's a few key points like I want to talk about. So perhaps like you could just expand on each one. So the first one being seek wealth, not status. Like, can you tell us what that means? Yeah, I think a lot of it is easy to confuse wealth with status and it's easy to look at famous people or people who are known and think that that's what you're aspiring to. And yeah,
That is not what you're aspiring to. If, if what you are actually after is getting wealth, uh, such that you can have your own independence, then you can't confuse that with status and you can't play status games. Um, so it is not enough to necessarily just build an audience. Uh, if you are not also building a business and it's really easy to get distracted with some of those things. Um,
where you're really working on being perceived as wealthy or perceived as successful instead of actually building a successful business or building wealth or making proper investments or things like that. So maybe an obvious example is like, look at politicians. Politicians are usually playing status games.
And there are plenty of people who are very wealthy and very anonymous who you've never heard of who are building, you know, quote unquote, boring businesses in spaces you've never heard of because the economy is truly enormously mind bogglingly huge. And there are plenty of niches that can make people very wealthy that no one else has ever heard of. And yeah.
One of his other kind of tweets is that you'd rather be, uh, rich and anonymous than poor and famous. Uh, and that's about the worst mix that you can get. So learning to separate, you know, making progress in your wealth building from, am I just building status or am I just building the perception? Um, and you know, almost everything that you consume, you know, most luxury goods, most, uh,
status, symbolism or signaling is really about perception and about social status and not about wealth. And so someone who's maybe living very well below their means and sleeping on an air mattress and spending all their money on books might not look very successful, but they may be building a very successful business just because they don't have the trappings of wealth and success around them. Doesn't mean they're not making a lot of progress.
Yeah, I think people really confuse those two. And like when I had a Morgan house on podcast, he told the story of when he was a valet, this guy came in with Porsche and he's like, oh, wow, this guy's rich. He has such a nice car. But then like a couple months later, that same guy came in with a Honda. And then Morgan asked him, like, what happens? Like, well, I couldn't afford the payments for my car. So he looked rich. He was playing that status game. But he actually had like no wealth. He couldn't afford, you know, that nice car. So that's just an important thing to remember.
Yeah, you never know what possessions people have refunded with debt versus, you know, if that guy's got a portion, it's half a percent of his net worth, like rock on. If it's 10%, that's...
uh, yeah, I don't envy that. Yeah. Yeah. There's always, um, you know, more behind the scenes. So I think another point from that thread that really like blew my mind, and this is kind of like what really got me super interested with, uh, Naval is about how you're not going to get rich, like renting out your time. And like, if you want to get truly rich, you have to own equity. Can you expand on that? Yeah. I think, um, the people that we normally think of as, as successful or as rich are, um,
I think the first association a lot of people have is people who are well paid, right? So doctors, lawyers, um, engineers, computer scientists, you know, people who have high salaries. And I'm sure Morgan talked about this as well. Like the practicality of that is when you have a high salary, you have high expenses and we tend to adjust really quickly to whatever the inflows are. And, um,
those people are trading their time for money, a lot of money, and they're very skilled people, but they're not necessarily building a pool of wealth that is working for them as they sleep, right? And that they're not building a set of resources that works for them, that builds leverage, that compounds over time. And there's not a lot of upside. The lawyers that you see or the doctors that you see that do get very wealthy are often the ones who own their own firm,
And so even the ones who, you know, there are plenty of rich doctors and lawyers, like, don't get me wrong, but they built a lot of their wealth by owning a business and leveraging their time and their judgment and their experience with capital, with employees, you know, with other tools and other resources so that that judgment was multiplied. And they made their money on the equity often rather than trading their time.
Yeah, it's such an important point to make. Even if you're a lawyer, you're making $600 an hour. If you're sleeping or you're on vacation, you're not making money. It's only when you own equity, like a stock, and it could grow independently without the inputs that you put in. So just another important point that you want to separate those two.
Yeah, the equity piece is interesting because there's a lot of ways to build equity or buy equity in a business, right? So somebody who's just investing in an index fund in the stock market is buying equity in a business. And you can work as a lawyer for $200,000 a year, save half your income, still live a great life, and invest that in the stock market. You don't have to spend much time on it. You don't have to think too hard about it. But that wealth is going to compound and it's going to grow. And that comes from owning equity in a business. You can...
work at a startup where you get stock options and that's equity in a business. You can kind of earn it with sweat equity. You can also just start a business and all of a sudden you own 100% of this small business and you
grow it from there. So there are many paths towards equity ownership that are available to people at all different times. There's not as big of a gate around it sometimes as people perceive, but it is good to know that that's your goal and that that's what you need to kind of work towards and not get tricked into thinking that you're going to get another raise and that's going to make the huge difference in your wealth creation. You've got to find your way towards owning equity.
Yeah, totally. I just read the book, The Richest Man in Babylon, and it talks about how you have to use that money that you saved up and invest it. You have to put that money to work to make more money. And then the last piece of advice I really love from Naval was how you have to use leverage. And the three main leverages are capital, labor, and then products with a zero marginal cost. So can you talk a little bit about how people use leverage to create wealth?
Yeah, leverage is maybe my favorite idea in the whole book, in part because it's put a label on something that I sensed there's something there without a label that I wasn't quite sure how to articulate and how to think about. And so classifying that he really unlocked a kind of new set of thoughts for me that I'm continuing to explore and hope to write a lot more about.
And it's fun to kind of put that lens over the world and start to dissect how different people have made their money and how businesses are built and how, you know, really skilled people use leverage. And it's kind of built into a lot of things. But once you see what once you kind of list it out like this, you start to see it a little bit more. So let's continue the lawyer example. Right. So a lawyer who's.
Um, maybe a few years into their career is doing a lot of kind of low level, lower level work. They have, you know, a partner above them. They're an associate at a firm. They're getting paid only a little bit. They don't have an assistant, you know, they're billed out at a lower hourly rate. Um,
But as they grow and as their judgment grows, they get more and more resources to allocate. So as they get promoted, they may get an assistant or a secretary to save them, you know, pull more of their time into high value tasks. They may get an associate assigned to them or paralegal so that they do less lower level tasks. They may, um,
the firm may spend money on them to be sure that they are getting, you know, get their dry cleaning done, get them a car to and from so that they can spend more billable hours. And so, um, when things are billed out, really, you can start to see people buying back that time. It makes the equation really clear. Um, but for other entrepreneurs or authors or, you know, whoever else is, is working on this, know that you have an hourly value on your time as well. And that whenever you can use leverage through automation, through tools, through, um,
the support of others through capital just by paying or ignoring, allowing costs to accrue, you can gain leverage and gain that time back. And the people that you see who are maximally leveraged are maybe Warren Buffett or Elon Musk or the people with such undeniably excellent judgment that they have billions of dollars at their disposal and hundreds or thousands of people.
Because you society just trust that they are going to know what to do with those resources. And they've proven and built that over time. And so if you see a business as just a collection of different types of lever of tools, of resources, of people, of money, you start to kind of see the world in that way and then scale it all the way back to like, where are you?
What are you trying to achieve and where can you look for a force multiplier as a lever that is within reach that you can use to kind of achieve those goals? So for you with this podcast, I don't know if you edit it yourself or if you hire an editor, but that is a common one. So you can spend more time reading, more time creating original content.
hiring an assistant to kind of maybe schedule out your post or using a tool to schedule out your social media posts so that you're not having to open, you know, Twitter every hour on the hour and do all of these things manually. So these are there are tiny levers that can get you started. And there are huge, enormous levers that drive society. And seeing both of those and the whole scale of them is a really kind of interesting way to see the world.
Yeah. And I love how you mentioned like in this book, Naval was able to articulate so many things that we feel we know, but then he's able to just use like the right words like such as leverage. And yeah, after reading this book, I'm thinking, OK, where can I apply leverage into my life? Like I should probably hire someone to edit the podcast so I could focus on the core aspect of it.
And just one person that, you know, Jack Butcher, who did the illustrations for this book, he has this great course called Build Once, Sell Twice. Because if you build something once, you can leverage that and sell it an infinite number of times. It doesn't matter how many people want to buy it. And that's just like great form of leverage. And now he's been super successful with the course. So, yeah, you want to look for areas in your life and think, where can I apply this lever and increase the leverage? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, this podcast is a perfect example, right? Like we are spending one hour creating this podcast and at any point in the future, anyone on earth can pick this up for $0 and play back an hour of our time. And whether that happens a hundred times or a million times, um, is an absolute miracle, uh, that that can happen and absolutely like overjoys me that we can, um,
spend this time and reach people in the future who are listening to this and like playing back a piece of the past at incredibly high fidelity and hopefully learning something and carrying that forward. Um, you know, and like taking a piece of us with them. That's, that's incredible. Totally. And I think one of all mentions in the book is like now with the internet, there's like more ways to leverage, uh, work, you know, more than that, more now than ever before. So it's a great time to, you know, actually use leverage in your life.
And then the last thing Naval talks about is how you want to find specific knowledge and productize yourself. And this was another thing that I felt like I knew, but then Naval was really able to articulate it. So can you explain this concept of productizing yourself?
Yeah, I think specific knowledge is an important piece of that that you mentioned in there, too. And, you know, it's worth saying that you've got to start this whole wealth building journey with understanding yourself and your talents and your interests. You know, I at least in early in my kind of career and journey in life, I spent a lot of time looking up to people and studying what they did and kind of trying to contort myself to fit that journey.
playbook because I was like, that playbook worked for them. I want to win this game. I want to follow those plays. And you never can execute someone else's plays quite the way they can. And the circumstances and the context change, of course, very meaningfully over even a few years, let alone 10 or 20. And so studying the early works of Warren Buffett is great and you might learn some things. But when you're looking 100 years ago, you got to look for
principles more than tactics. Um, and so separating some of those things and, um, understanding, you know, who you are and what you're interested in and using that as an advantage rather than trying to do something, um,
That doesn't use your strengths and your interests just because it worked for somebody else is is not a path to success You're just and that's that's trying to sail upwind rather than downwind so finding ways to kind of put the wind at your back there and Use who you are and your strengths and your interests so that this all kind of feels fun and easy, you know I love reading books. I love writing books. I like conversations with people who write books like this is super fun for me And I'm loving this moment
Um, it also, you know, is going to introduce more people to the book and, you know, that, that is a wonderful kind of dual use of time. Um, cause I'm, I'm happy to do this for every reason. And, um, so that in a way, like you and I are both productizing ourselves in this very moment, you know, we're, we're recording this podcast. It is going to be a product that lives on forever that, you know, however many people can, can listen to and use and enjoy. And, um,
It is an authentic piece of us that we are interested in and happy to do that we are productizing. And whether the product in this form is a book or a podcast or a course or a company or a trading algorithm or one specific stock trade.
doesn't matter nearly as much as using, you know, understanding what you're uniquely gifted at and using your strengths to turn that into a scalable, sellable product. Um, if, if you want to, you know, follow the productize yourself playbook. And I think Jack Butcher has done an incredible job with that. There's no, maybe no better living example of productizing yourself than, than watching Jack over the last, you
you know, year or two and he's taken his skills as a designer and a writer and a brand builder, uh, really, which I think is visualized value and value are incredible brands. And people think of him as a designer because the design is striking, but he is much more than that. And he's a brand builder and he's a content creator and he's a community builder. And, um, it's been staggering to watch and watching his example, uh,
has really helped me understand these ideas. You know, he's living them in a way that like I have studied them and he is living them. Um, and it's, it's a very, uh, it's wonderful to watch. So yeah, highly recommend to him following him if, uh, people don't already. Yeah. He's like, yeah, he's an incredible guy. And what I love that you mentioned earlier is like to find your innate strengths is like really find you to follow your curiosity and that'll lead you to like original ideas, but
which is like something I'm doing now. It's like, I got really curious about how can we become better readers? So like for the past year, I've been reading books about books and how to become a better reader, sharing all that information on Twitter. And now I'm planning on creating a course out of that. So that's like my own product. And then I could sell it to like an infinite number of people. So that's like a following involves advice there.
Yeah, that's a really interesting one. I think we're going to see an absolute boom of incredible online courses. And I'm really eager to see the kind of ecosystem that comes up from around that. I'm starting Wirecutter for online courses. So this is an independent, unbiased review site for online courses because for as many life-changing, incredible ideas as there are out there in courses, there are also online.
some real scams and some real shoddy work that are passing for courses and for people, you know, investing meaningful amounts of money into what are hopefully life-changing ideas. Like it is very important to find independent, unbiased opinions and understand what's a good course, not just a good course or a bad course, but a good course for you in this particular moment in your life and in your skills and what you're bringing into it. Can you expect
your life to change as a result of this course i think that's the the bar that um you know all everyone building online courses should should be holding themselves to yeah 100 like how much does it change that person's life and so now that we have the wealth part down i want to move on to like my second favorite part which is like the the happiness part like everyone wants to be happiness in life and well i was really surprised that nival looks at happiness as a skill actually and so can you tell us like what you learned from him and like how we could develop the skill of happiness
Yeah, I mean, the perspective that it's a skill and not just a skill, but a choice is absolutely foundational, because if it's not a skill and if it's not a choice and there's not even any work to do right, then you just have to kind of shrug and say, like, well, I guess I'm as happy as I'm going to be, which is interesting.
not how anything else in life works, right? Like you're not only as smart as you're ever going to be, you're not only as strong as you're ever going to be. All of these things are malleable and changeable. And we don't think of our, our level of happiness as being, um,
controllable. Like if anything, when we, when we talk about it, like the common language around it is, um, you know, did something make you happy? Um, are you happy now that X has been accomplished or achieved? Um, we are always, if you listen to the language people use around happy, it's almost always ascribing it to external circumstances. Um, which is the opposite of everything that Naval says, you know, it's like we think of ourselves as, as fixed in the world is malleable. And so we're spending all of our energy trying to change the world around us to fit
are kind of baked in perception of how the world should be, you know, whether that's how we're doing at our job or the relationships that we're in or, you know, a political opinion or, you know, whatever.
We all have desires that we are projecting onto the world constantly and gaps that we're creating between what is and what we think should be. And, you know, his prescription for happiness is more, look, assume that the world outside you is fixed. It is what it is. And you can't control it. All you can do is control your judgment of it and your perception of it. And if you can choose to interpret the things that are going on around you as possibilities,
positive um then all of a sudden you're you're a happy person you're not projecting wishes you're not lamenting the world the way that is and you can you can choose to make that i'm not saying it's easy a choice is maybe um a little flippant in that like it implies that you should be able to just snap your fingers and make the choice and it's not easy it does take a lot of um
mental effort. It takes a lot of reminders. It takes, you know, remembering every instant that you can make these decisions and choose a positive interpretation. But those reflexes are trainable and, um,
You know, we all know people who are optimistic and positive and, you know, laugh easily. And we think of those people as happy, but those are learned behaviors. And maybe they grew up in a family where those are the behaviors that were modeled and maybe they had to learn it. And maybe they had some real setbacks and they had to choose to kind of train themselves into that happiness.
or maybe they learned that the world just reflects back at you, what you put out into it. And so if you are a happy person, you, people will be happier when they're with you. And all of a sudden you're happier. I think all of those things are, um, true, but it all starts with the idea that, um,
That this is changeable and this is learnable. And that doesn't mean it's easy, but it does mean it's doable. And there's a reason for hope. And as soon as there's a reason for hope, now all of a sudden you can work on it and you can learn it and you can change some of your habits. Yeah, I love that. Once you start looking at your life as –
happiness is a skill and something you could change it doesn't mean it's easy but it does mean it's possible and like just simple things like naval recommends like you know cutting out like alcohol sugar like negative news negative people and then working to build like good habits that are going to reward you in like the long term and you know there's so many things you could do to increase your happiness and i just i just love that part in his book it was like super informative and helpful as well yeah it's um you know i i didn't start this book looking for
to spend a lot of time meditating on, you know, happiness and philosophy, you know, um, I had followed him much more for his startup and investing advice over the years, but I was very lucky to have, um, to have found it and to have like taken that in at this age. Um, cause I think it is, it is calmed me and made me like, I somewhat paradoxically like better at all of those other things just by understanding that, um,
That that is a choice and that is doable kind of at any point in life. I think, you know, Naval's life, he spent a lot of many years unhappy while he was building his greatest successes. And he was kind of choosing to be unhappy, as he would say, until he accomplished certain things. And once he accomplished them and they didn't deliver the happiness that he thought, he's like, OK, now I've got to find another way to find happiness. And it's just a different path than the one he was on.
And the question that I'm kind of left with after this book and that we're all maybe left with to explore on our own is, is how can you kind of have both of those at the same time? How can you build the skill of happiness while building a company, while, you know, building your wealth and, and,
hopefully, you know, having the best of both of those worlds through as much of our lives as we can. Yeah. Yeah. I think one, one important quote he had in the book is like something like desire is a contract. You make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. And on the plus side is that, that, you know, motivates you to achieve more, but on the downside, that makes you temporarily unhappy until you get what you want. So it's kind of like this trade-off you got to choose. You want to be happy or do you want to be a little bit more successful? And you have to know like when to dial it forward and when to like dial it back.
Yeah, that's absolutely – I think that's one of the best lines in the whole book. Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. And once that's in your head, it's hard to get it out of it. And it's hard to know what to do because there's a lot of things that you might wish were different. And
It is stunningly easy to take on new desires. You can scroll through Instagram for two minutes and say, oh my God, I want to cook like Anthony Bourdain and I want to look like The Rock and I want to go shoot guns on a beach and whatever. There's a million things that you can pick up instantly as a desire and all of a sudden you find yourself unhappy and you're not sure why. It's because you just started to envy individual aspects of yourself.
you know, the best piece of dozens of other people's lives. And that didn't used to be possible. And it's possible now when we're not well adjusted to it, the prescription that Naval, I think, um, gives for that to kind of a company that desires a contract idea is just a very deliberately limit the number of desires. You know, it's, it's, um, not everyone wants to go
renounce all material possessions and desires and go be a monk but that's what the monks are doing you know they are removing all desires so that they can be present and happy in that moment and that's really difficult to do um but that's why they're doing it they're doing it to achieve that state of you know no contracts with themselves and they're just being happy with what is um
But for, you know, if you want to kind of mix that with a little bit more of a practical life and building a career and building a family, the balance point is just to limit the number of desires and be very careful with the desires that you choose to take on.
pick one, pick one desire at a time, let the rest kind of sit on the back burner or burn and remind yourself constantly that that's not my desire at the moment. I'm not waiting on that to be happy. I can be happy in this moment with these circumstances. And, you know, I've made the progress that I can make today on the one thing that I'm really focused on. Um, but, uh, you know, it's, it's hard to kind of
feel like you can jump off that treadmill. Um, and not, not just another one these days. Oh yeah. That had Donnie, you know, treadmill is a scary thing, but I think I love this tweet he had was like, like not desiring something is just as good as having it. Cause like your equal levels of happiness. Yeah. And then the other one that's in that kind of family is, uh, I don't even think this was an evolving. It was somebody kind of in that circle, but, um, you know, if you can't be happy with a cup of coffee, you won't be happy with a yacht. Uh,
which is a brilliant illustration that like happiness is about your perception, not about what you have. And I like that quote in particular, just because it, you know, you hold a trigger for that thought every day and you get re reminded every time you drink a cup of coffee, it's like, I can take a moment to let this make me happy and let this be enough. And, um,
It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful thing. Totally. Yeah. And I think I've all said before, it was like money won't solve all your problems, but it's solved you like your money problems, but then like your happiness problems, you have to take care of that yourself. So that's like a whole separate ball game. So, yeah, I think there's, um, there's an interesting triage. I mean, I've been thinking about this in the world of leverage too. Um,
you know, what things are important. There's a, there's a two by two here of like, what's important and what's outsourceable, you know? Um, and there are plenty of, you can't outsource your workout, you know, no matter how hard you try, you can't outsource your workout. You can't outsource your, your mindset. You know, you can purchase tools and services and help. You can get a personal trainer, you can get a therapist, you can get coaches, you can get books, you can do affirmations, you can buy meditations, you know, like,
There's a million ways to improve those things, but at the end of the day, it is unoutsourceable to do some of that work. I think Naval is an interesting spot where he has now built his business as such that almost all of his business is executed and run by other people. He has built himself out of AngelList and most of the things that he has done on a daily basis. Now, as he has freed up that time, he's focused more and more on
the highly important on outsourceable things like, like fitness and health and keeping a, you know, a fit body and a calm mind. And, um, you know, just appreciating each, each moment. And that's, uh, something that we can all kind of aspire to, but triaging tasks by, you know,
Is can anyone else do this for me? If not, I have to prioritize it. And owning owning your mindset is is kind of I heard somebody say the other day, like it's you're living with a crazy roommate in your head that is like your internal monologue and learning to work with that roommate and train them and
you know or know when to kick them out or shut them down or put them to sleep or like whatever um you know it's the same way with your body like this nobody can take care of that for you and it's the foundation of everything else that you do yeah and i'm really glad you mentioned that because i want to segue into meditation because it's uh like in the ball mentioned in the book meditation had like a large part in him achieving happiness and he talks about like many of the benefits of meditation that how he does it for like an hour
Like the first thing each morning he meditates for an hour. So I was hoping you could kind of elaborate on kind of the benefits of meditation and like reasons why people should give it a shot. Yeah. And I've always kind of, um, as you go through the layers of the sedimentary layers of his Twitter account and history is like experimented with meditation a lot and tried a lot, quite a few kind of different versions, um, and talks about it in a lot of different ways, you know? Um,
I think the probably the clearest prescription and maybe the most current is what you talked about, which is he challenged everybody on Twitter to do a 60 day, one hour a day meditation. He's like, you know, you don't need a mantra. You don't need a you don't have to do anything. You just sit or lay in bed and with no stimulus for an hour a day and just let your thoughts come and go and see what happens. And in the book, he talks a little bit about like
You're basically getting all of your, you know, the unresolved things just kind of come to you in that time and you work through it. You almost it's almost like, you know, you work towards a mental inbox zero. And when you do, you have this kind of moment of bliss and then you love being in that meditative state. But you have to work through that kind of cruft in that time to get there. And he says that the, you know.
You can't really do it five or ten minutes at a time and maybe you can do that and that is a beneficial habit and it maybe helps you to not be super reactive or super emotional or just kind of separate those things. I think meditation in any dosage is probably beneficial. Nobody's going around saying meditation is terrible for you. So take what you can get, how you can do it, that works for you. For some people, it
running is meditation or showering is meditation. It's just these moments where you're alone with your thoughts, but giving yourself that break and realizing that if it helps you to realize that that's productive time, that that is time that you're maybe training your mind or sitting with yourself. If you're super type A and driven and ambitious, it may feel like, oh my God, I wasted an hour. I could have accomplished X task. But to give yourself permission to
you know, do that work and, um, you know, however you have to frame it to, to get it done. If it, if it benefits you, it benefits you, but, uh, everybody has their own, their own relationship with it. And, um, you know, do your own, do your own research, find your own habits. Um, I think is, is what Naval would say, but that's, that's where he is currently is the, you know, one hour a day early in the morning. Um, just, uh, be, find a way to be comfortable with yourself and enjoy that time.
Yeah. And yeah. And like in the book, he says the key point of meditation is to like spend time with your thoughts that you go hiking. You could, you know, journal or you could just, you know, sit down and just breathe for an hour. And what really got me like to say like, OK, I'm gonna start meditating is when I read the part where he said meditation is like intermittent fasting for the mind. So like I do, I love doing intermittent fasting. I feel a lot better when I do it.
And when I realized this is intermittent fasting for the mind, I was like, I should definitely give this a try. And it's actually been a hard challenge, but I've been enjoying it. And hopefully, the benefits will start to reveal themselves.
Yeah. I don't know. Um, you know, I'm, I'm a big reader as well. And I don't know if you have a similar experience, but sometimes I find that like I read and I read and I read and I read and it's great. Um, but the epiphanies don't happen while I'm reading so much as like, I load my head with all of this stuff and then I go work out or go for a walk or, you know, just go, go to sleep. And then you kind of like your subconscious choose on it and just like something new and interesting bubbles up. And if you don't give yourself that space, um,
Um, that, that intermittent fasting sort of mental space for that stuff to churn through and bubble up. Um, you know, I, I showed her to think how many epiphanies I missed over the years by church, like piling stuff on when I should have just kind of like put in a few good things and let it breathe. Um,
So I don't know. Can you kind of relate to that experience? Oh, totally. It's like you have to give yourself time to digest. And I think this is one of the reasons why people have so many great ideas in the shower because that's the only time they give themselves to meditate and stop thinking temporarily. So yeah.
I personally have a hard time like just sitting there and meditating. I would like to be better at it. But what I have found is that I can accomplish the same thing by going to the hot tub. So like I do like a sauna spa hot tub and like that atmosphere, that environment, like
I really look forward to that. And it is the same meditative kind of like thinking space thing, but because I'm physically in a different place than like my own bedroom, um, you know, that feels different and like a, you know, a reward to me and that mental, you know, space and clarity is still there. So I guess that's, that's my meditation. It's funny you mentioned that. Yeah. Like before Corona, I used to always go to the gym and go to the sauna and that's where I would do my meditation. And yeah, it's, you know, just try different things, see what works for you. And then if it works for you, just keep doing that.
And don't forget to tweet about how much you meditate. That's an important step. Of course. That's step one. Yes. Status signaling about your bliss is critical. Yeah. So so one of the reasons I just like love following Naval on Twitter is all like the reading advice he gives. And I love how in your book you have like a whole chapter dedicated to how Naval reads and how he looks at books. Can you share like some of like what you found surprising about like his perspective on reading?
Yeah, that's a whole, I think that section is underrated. Like not a lot of people, there's a whole section called building judgment. And it's such a, it's a key piece of the whole building wealth section. But not many people will kind of bring up or dive into the building judgment piece, but it's such a foundational thing, I think. And a piece of that is the reading chapter. And it's,
It's interesting, his advice for reading, or at least I don't want to say it's advice so much as the pattern that Naval has fallen into that he shared with us was that he
basically treats books like blogs or like Twitter and just like jumps in and out of them wherever he wants to and This was kind of came up for him when he was trying to he's like I realized I was spending so much time on Twitter and on blogs that I stopped reading books and I Tried to sit down to read a book and didn't have the attention span for it Because he had done it in a year or whatever it was and so he started treating the book and just like jumping around to whatever was most interesting and
And kind of forgave himself for not starting a book in the beginning and finishing it all the way to the end. And it's like, I don't have to do that. And so now spends, you know, talks about how he spends much more time rereading the basics or the greats or rereading sections of things that he finds interesting. And just kind of treating it more like play than like,
a task, you know, or a mandate to finish a particular book, the way an author wants to present an idea isn't necessarily how he wants to consume it. And it may be, you know, there's a lot of stuff that he could have already already known and wants to skip around or, you know, there are plenty of books out there. I'm sure as you know, that like they take one idea and expand it into 50,000 words. Um, and that is, you know, you don't have to read all of those kinds of books. If you get the idea, you get the idea and you can kind of move on from there.
yeah i think like the one piece of advice i really love from him is that he talks about treating books like throwaway blog posts like you could pick it up you could read it you could skip you could skim and another important thing he always says is like if you're not enjoying a book it's okay quit it like we're taught in school like whenever you start a book you have to finish it he's like no like doing that is why he lost his love for reading in the first place it's only when he started treating books that something like you could
pick up any time and you know stop it or skip through it it's like that's when he really developed this love for books and it really gives you this freedom and it just makes reading a lot more enjoyable and i think too many readers like they'll start a book they won't like it and then they'll quit reading altogether instead of just quitting that one book and it's such important lesson yeah he's got um there's another one in there that is counterintuitive i think that is uh he's like he
almost advocates reading the junk food, like read whatever you're interested in. Um, you know, I remember as a kid, it was like, I loved this, you know, this sci-fi book and I wanted to just reread it over and over again. Um, but I did not at all want to read Shakespeare as assigned by my English class. And like English almost kills, you know, your love of reading. If you're forced to read a thing that you're not into. Um, but you know, and I was like, I love comic books and I read comic books until I read sci-fi. And then I read sci-fi until I read science. And then I read science until I read math. And like,
I basically, and I'm a math and philosophy. And he's like, your, your tastes naturally evolve as you kind of like grow or grow out of things, but like never be ashamed of what you're interested in. You don't have to read,
you know, capital in the 21st century because somebody tweeted about it for some signaling thing, like read the stuff that you're interested in. You'll read twice as long or 10 times as long and you'll read more and you'll get more ideas and it'll be authentic to who you are. And, um, you know, those are really interesting, awesome things. Uh, the other kind of thing that he talks about, which is like a little bit of, um, maybe contrast that is like,
Stay with the foundations for as long as you need to. And if you get a solid foundation of especially truth and around math, like and, you know, you won't fear any book. You can you can always ladder up if you pick up something that's super advanced and it's like painful for you to get through. There's there's a precursor book or a foundational piece that you can go back to that may be easier and more accessible. And you can kind of.
pick that up you know in a year or two when it's going to mean something more to you and i've definitely done some i've opened some books and been like nope not ready for that one i gotta find that that's level level five and i can't handle that yet i need a level two book and maybe that'll level me up and i can handle that boss later
Yeah, work your way up there. And I just want to double down on something you mentioned earlier. Yeah, Naval has a great piece of advice where he says, read what you love until you love to read. And yeah, like, as you mentioned, he started off reading comic books and these mystery books and then slowly made his way to like nonfiction and science, like physics and all these like hardcore intellectual subjects.
And like I had like a similar path. And it's like first you want to enjoy reading and make it into the habit and then you can optimize it. I think too many people try to optimize that reading habit and go for like the hard classic great books first. And then they just fail and never like pick up a book again.
Yeah. I mean, I, uh, similar, um, maybe heuristic that I use is like, I try to just read stuff that is going to help me clear the obstacle in life that's in front of me at the time. You know, I used to try to see five years ahead and read five years ahead. And it's just so much more energizing to like, know that what you're reading now is feeding, is like helping you get over through around an obstacle that you're dealing with at the moment. Um,
And you can't always predict that. And it's not always true. And it shouldn't always be prescriptive that way. But, you know, that kind of just in time, like it's so much more real to you when you're sitting in front of the problem and, you know, and sort of like reading the key of the pattern of the lock that you're like right next to at the time, you kind of get a lot more out of that. And I find that I,
retain more from the books and enjoy them more when i'm like oh man i can i can apply this immediately and um test this theory against the world and see if it passes the test of reality like this is this is exciting yeah i love that piece i call it read it when you need it it's like more relevant a book is to you and the sooner you could apply it the more interested you'll be in it and the easier you'll have time like reading it that's like yeah very catchy yeah yeah rhymes so you know it's true
So, Eric, like we've talked about, you know, health, happiness, money, you know, reading books and like you spent, you know, a lot of time compiling this book together. Can you tell us a little bit of how you change as a person? Like who was Eric before and who's Eric now? Yeah, I mean, I definitely have a few different maybe lenses on the world, you know, like
I think I understand how some things fit together better on the, on the wealth side, especially, um, you know, like we've mentioned lenses of leverage and, you know, just learning to kind of see some of those forces in the world, um, for what they are. It's hard to say, you know, I feel kind of like the frog in the pot because, you know, I studied his ideas for three years and, um, on the
On the one hand, I could quote Naval for like half of what comes out of my mouth, which would be slightly annoying. But I also feel guilty, like not attributing, you know, I make in so many thoughts of what
you know, this, this material that I've sat, I probably read this book 20 times in the course of building this thing. And there's, you know, a million words of source material that we distilled down to 50,000 words of the most insight dense book we could possibly create. And, um, there's just a lot of reps through the material in there that have kind of sunk kind of deep into my bones. And I feel like I've built a little like a
mental Naval. Yeah. They can sit on my shoulder and like be on my little board of directors and I can talk to his Hogwarts portrait and, you know, feel like I'm getting some of seeing the world the way he would see it, at least in some, in some cases. And that's a, it's a high bar. You gotta spend a lot of time with the material before you can, you can kind of get there. Um, so it's hard to pinpoint exactly how I've changed. I know I've, I've got, um, maybe more, uh,
More calm, maybe a deeper keel, a better kind of understanding of a broader set of people. I think like when when you kind of reduce your own judgment of the world, it helps you.
you see everyone kind of projecting their own instead of, you know, you kind of looking down on the maze instead of from the side, um, and it makes you a little more patient, I think. And, um, understanding of, you know, a broad, broad set of perspectives.
Yeah, I mean, that's wonderful to hear. And I think everyone should have like a little bit of a ball on their shoulder making better decisions. I think that would come in handy for everyone. I hope this book can do that for people. All right. Well, so the closing question I always ask all my guests is what are two books that had a major impact on you and how did those books change your life? So I would love to hear like two books that really had an impact on your life. Cool. I got a question for you too. Can I do that? Yeah, sure.
Okay. Uh, so I would like to know maybe, um, what do you think about the gap between like reading and application? So, you know, we've all spent so much time sort of reading and gathering ideas and distilling them. And, um, you know, so much of what we read, we read with the intent of applying it. Um, and I, uh,
I don't know how many, I don't know what the percentage of ideas read to applied is, but I know it's nowhere near a hundred percent. Um, and so like, how do you think about that? How do you think, is there like, um, a correct dish number? Should it be higher? Should it be lower? How do you triage those ideas? How do you work on the gap between like, I read this and I understand it and I believe it to work, but I haven't yet made it a part of me and let it change my life.
Yeah, so that's a great question. And I feel like when I read a book, I have that information of how I should change in me. And so what I do at the end of each book, on the left side of the back of the book, I write like the key takeaways. So everything I learned from the book on the right, I have a session called actionable advice. So I try to think of ways, how can I apply that information to like change my life? So for your book,
I have what areas in my life can I use like leverage? And then I also have like, let's try meditating, you know, 15 minutes a day. And the kind of list goes on of how can I apply what I learned into my life?
And I would say like, I could look at my bookshelf and like each book, if I have just like one application that I now do my life, like the book, tiny habits, uh, got me into the flossing. Uh, the book discipline equals freedom got me into working out more. Uh, the book can't hurt me by David Goggins got me jogging every Saturday. So if I could just have like one thing, uh,
that one habit or one new behavior that that book implemented on my life, I feel like it's well worth it, then I could always go back to implement more things because you don't want to overload yourself and hear 20 things I need to change about my life tomorrow. That's too overwhelming. Just one behavior at a time, implement that in your life, make your life better, and then look for more ways to optimize it. Yeah, that's a really good answer. How many books do you read that aren't
Um, that aren't like super actionable advice, but you're like really glad they're in your head. Maybe, um, like I'm thinking of like the black Swan maybe is like, you know, it's a fantastic mental model. Like, do you have a tactical takeaway from that? Or is it more like, Oh my God, I have to remember to see the world this way. Hmm.
Yeah, I would say about like maybe like three quarters of the books I read are kind of like information that I could apply to my life. Like the Black Swan, just be aware of like certain events that just because they haven't happened, they still may happen. And just having that information in my head, maybe when investing or something or, you know,
it's good to have that knowledge and, you know, have in the back of your pocket. But I think my recent focus has been, okay, what books can, will have like the most immediate or near, um, like near future impact that I, you know, what lessons can I apply to make my life better? So that's kind of been my focus, but I do love reading, you know, fiction books like the great Gatsby, the picture of Dorian Gray. So there's that reading for enjoyment, reading for information, and then reading for application. So I think you have all those different areas.
Yeah, that's interesting. Good buckets. I love Greg Gatsby, too. I remember sitting there reading Black Swan in bed in San Francisco when there was an earthquake. And I was like, oh, I got to move out of this city immediately. I'm way too near a fault line to have an actionable item. Move away from fault line. Okay, so what was the question? Two books that most impacted my life? Yeah. Okay, I think probably the most...
This is, you know, this is a hard question, you know? Okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to do like kind of maybe two bookends of like, I read every single strip of Calvin and Hobbes when I was like somewhere between like five and eight probably. And so like Bill Watterson's worldview and humor and philosophy is like deeply, deeply embedded in me. So that is less like one book than a whole author's kind of body of work. Um, so, and I've interestingly, like,
some of my favorite people have also i'm like what is it about you and that is like um andy sparks has like a uh he's a buddy of mine has like a tattoo of calvin hobbs on his forearm and i was like i knew what we get along so well like you're a calvin hobbs guy he's like oh yeah we're totally like we got the same kind of brainwashing um so that was very formative for me um
And the other is probably, um, poor Charlie's almanac. I mean, I like, it's the sort of anthology of Warren or, uh, Charlie Munger's like whole world views, all of his talks is a biography, the story of his partnership with Buffett. And I just happened to kind of pick that off my dad's bookshelf when I was like 21. And, um, I was like, man, this guy's hilarious and brilliant. He's so right. Counterintuitively about so many things. Um,
And I mean, that book in itself was an incredible sort of change in perspective. But it also I mean, the reason it was so impactful is because it changed so much of what I dictated, so much of what I read for the next five years after that. Right. So I went straight into Sildini and straight into Kahneman and Tversky and straight into Benjamin Franklin's biography by Isaacson and I.
you know, that it was just kind of the beginning of that snowball of books for me that I was like, okay, I want to recreate this guy's whole, um, worldview and study all of the influences on him and like pick up all those things. And so that, those kind of, um,
I don't know, two very, very formative but very different books. Yeah, I think that's a great recommendation. I just got my copy of Port Charlie's Almanac came yesterday and I started reading it, already enjoying it. And it's the most money I ever spent on a book. It was like $60 or something. But people kept saying it's worth the price. You know, don't focus on the price, focus on the value. So I pulled the trigger on it and been enjoying it so far and can't wait to dive more deeper into that.
oh yeah it's an incredible book it is like a coffee table book i mean it's huge and it's full color and like you know it's it's a 65 book but it is also like i mean you know the return on that is infinite um i mean he's he's so brilliant yeah as navali would say you want to play long-term games and buying this book is definitely one of those long-term decisions you want to do yeah it's a good investment um
I'm sure you won't regret it. Awesome. So Eric, this has been a wonderful conversation. I'm sure listeners will like to learn more about you and find ways to connect with you. Where's the best place for them to go?
Yeah, everything about the book is on Navalmanac.com. So I got an email list there. We'll be doing all kinds of new kind of more writing, sharing more stuff than it all comes out with. So if you like the book, the book is totally free on the website. You can download the EPUB and Moby and PDF. You can read it on the website. If you want the physical version or Kindle, you can buy those through Amazon. I'm on Twitter and I've got a site of my little writing at edorgenson.com on Twitter, Derek Jorgensen.com.
Yeah, come find me. I'm easy to find and DM and let's chat. And I'll come back and we can talk about Munger after you've read Port Charlie's Almanac. We'll do the Almanac series.
Yeah, that would be awesome. And yeah, for everyone listening, you get the book, the ebook free online, which is like when it came out, I started reading it. Then I even ordered one copy for myself. And then Eric sent me another copy. So I have two copies. So like I read this book three times. I highly recommend getting it, you know, so much wonderful information, easy to consume. And as we mentioned earlier, you know, you want to apply the information that you learn, not just, you know, read it and leave it there, like actually apply it and, you know, you know, start living the life.
the angel philosopher life, I would say. Yeah. I want to like a challenge for the audience is, is let me know. Uh, I, my challenge to myself was to make this the most insight dense book I possibly could. So it, I wanted it to read easily and it feels kind of narrative because of all this talking about it. Um,
But I want this to be the most highlighted book in the Kindle store by density, by highlight density. And so I really like distilled and distilled and distilled to get the most insight rich, applicable, life changing book that you could possibly get in 50,000 words. So, yeah.
highlight away let me know if uh if we reach that yeah that's a great goal to have and yeah so much so much great information here that once again highly recommend checking out and eric i just want to say thank you so much for coming on the reader journey podcast today it's been a pleasure talking with you i learned a ton and i'm sure listeners did as well awesome thanks alex appreciate it thank you
And that is a wrap, ladies and gentlemen. Eric Jorgensen has left the building, or in this case, the Skype call, because we're doing a virtual podcast because of Corona and everything. So it's just you and me right now. So I just wanted to take some time to give you an update on Alex and Books and just share a couple of things with you.
So first of all, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. It means so much to me. I've been getting so many positive comments and DMs about people saying how they love listening to the podcast, that they've been learning a ton and actually been applying the information they've learned into their life to make things better. So that's such a wonderful message to get. And we recently hit over 20,000 podcast downloads, which is an incredible achievement in such a short time. The podcast has only been around for like three months.
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and that's really the goal of Alex in Books and you guys are helping making that happen so once again thank you everyone for your support keep reading keep learning and keep listening I'll see you guys soon take care hey everyone I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Reader's Journey you can learn more about what's covered in today's podcast in the show notes below
If you enjoyed this podcast, the best way you can support it is by subscribing and leaving a positive review. If you're looking for reading tips or book recommendations, head over to alexandbooks.com. If you want to join my reading journey, you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter by searching for Alex and Books. That's all for now. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope to see you soon. Read on, everyone.