Naval Ravikant on the importance of following your intellectual obsessions

“If I look back on my life, almost everything great that I’ve managed to pull off - great by my own definition, not the world’s definition - has come from following my own natural intellectual obsessions.”

Naval continues:

“If you can get obsessed over something, dive into it, and just let yourself go and learn everything about it with no motivation other than you just want to know the answer… you can figure it out to a detail that other people don’t.”

He gives the examples of Bryan Johnson’s obsession with not aging or Balaji Srinivasan’s obsession with the Network State. He believes it’s the foundation for all so-called ‘self-improvement’ and ‘success’:

“[It] really just comes from letting you be yourself, follow the things you really want to follow. Figure out the things you really want to figure out - not worrying about what other people want or think - and you’ll find yourself in the same place at the end, no matter which route you take.”

Full video: The Network State Podcast “The Network State Conference 2024 - Livestream“ (Sep 2024)

P.S. We’ve put together a YouTube playlist with every Naval Ravikant insight we’ve ever shared. You can watch it here: "Best startup advice from Naval Ravikant"