Getting Rich Begins With Curiosity and Ends With Mastery
“If you aren’t curious about it, you’ll never be good at it.”
Curiosity leads to obsession, which leads to mastery. And only through mastery do you become the best in the world at what you do - and get paid well for it.
But, it all begins with your genuine curiosities. If you want to get rich, the first thing you need to do is get your curiosity back.
Society Dampens Your Innate Curiosity.
Kids are curious about the world. They ask endless questions about how it works and why it works that way. Each one of us once had this same curiosity.
But, as you get older, society drills this out of you. In school, everyone follows the same academic path. Even in university, you’re given a specific set of academic guidelines to function within if you want to graduate.
This means that if you don’t actively protect your innate curiosity, you’ll lose your instinct for it. Naval Ravikant talks about this on his podcast, How To Get Rich: Every Episode:
“One of the problems is that schools and our educational system, and even our way of raising children replaces curiosity with compliance. And once you replace the curiosity with the compliance, you get an obedient factory worker, but you no longer get a creative thinker. And you need creativity, you need the ability to feed your own brain to learn whatever you want.”
The “modern” school system is a product of the industrial age. It’s designed to create “productive” workers that function between the hours of 9-5, not strong individuals pursuing their curiosities.
It takes a lot of work to figure out what you’re actually curious about. Most people just don’t find the time to do it. Or worse, they pretend to be curious about the stuff their boss, co-workers, or friends are curious about.
To Get Your Curiosity Back, Spend More Time Alone.
The past year has been tough for everyone, but one positive for me personally was that I spent a lot of time working alone from home. And I realized that I didn’t care at all about the stuff I was working on. I just wasn’t curious about it.
And I think that had been the case for a long time. But it was covered up by the social interactions and distractions of working in an office for 8 hours a day. My curiosity was drilled out of me by routine. It was the time alone that showed me what I care about. Here’s Naval again:
“Curiosity is innate, but smothered via socialization and distractions. Spend enough time alone and it will return.”
When you spend enough time alone, your mind has the freedom to wander. And it wanders towards the stuff you’re naturally interested in.
And once you notice what direction your mind is moving you, you can turn to the greatest information tool ever built: the internet.
The Internet Is Your Personal Curiosity Machine.
Whatever you’re curious about, the internet has an answer. It’s not always the right answer, but with enough digging and some critical thinking, you can learn almost anything.
You can learn to build a website from scratch (like I did with Wealest). You can learn simple search engine optimization. You can learn to write movies or code, or shoot and edit videos. The internet is your personal curiosity machine and it’s open 24/7/365.
You just need to get your curiosity back to take full advantage!
Here’s Naval explaining this:
“The beauty of the internet is the entire library of Alexandria times 10 is at your fingertips at all times. It’s not the means of education or the means of learning are scarce, the means of learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce. So, you really have to cultivate the desire.”
Once you have the desire to learn, you can dig as deep as you want. And eventually, if you move in the same direction long enough, you’ll master a niche in your field.
Mastery Comes From Being Curious In The Same Direction For A Really Long Time.
Everything I’ve followed through on and become relatively good at started with a natural curiosity. No one can force you to be curious about something. It’s innate.
Never Chase What’s “Hot” Right Now.
This means that you shouldn’t try and chase the “hot” new career path just because it’s hot. First, you won’t have any fun. And second, someone else who is genuinely curious about it is going to kick your ass over the long term.
Naval writes:
“Success is the by-product of learning, which is the by-product of curiosity… Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now.”
It’s better to be in a field that’s relatively stable (or growing slightly) that gets you excited than is to be in one growing like crazy that you don’t care about. Again, the person who does care about the new field is going to beat you. Every time.
If you do want to expose yourself to a new field that you think has potential, find a way to invest in it instead.
But choose to work and build in a field you’ll be curious about for a decade. That’s about how long it’s going to take you to “make it.”
To Become A Master, Get More Specific In What It Is You Do.
It’s hard to become a pro athlete, no matter how curious you are about sports. Unless you win the genetic lottery, it’s probably not going to happen.
But, that doesn’t mean you can’t master a component of the field. The key is to keep tweaking and getting more specific in what it is you do until you’ve mastered a very specific niche.
Here’s Naval on how to think about this, from his article, Keep Redefining What You Do:
“When you’re searching for what to do, you have two different foci to keep in mind. One is, ‘I want to be the best at what I do.’ The second is, ‘What I do is flexible, so that I’m the best at it.’ You want to arrive at a comfortable place where you feel, ‘This is something I can be amazing at, while still being authentic to who I am.’ It’s going to be a long journey. But now you know how to think about it.”
Now you see why it’s so important to be curious. Because you’re going to have to keep digging, keep pivoting, keeping tweaking exactly what it is you do until you’re the best in the world at it.
And if you’re not curious, you won’t have the patience or discipline to stick with it.
Become The Best Plumbing Contractor In Bemidji.
Charlie Munger has a famous analogy for exactly what Naval describes. Munger encourages you to become “the best plumbing contractor in Bemidji,” which is a town of about 15,000 people:
“If you want to be the best tennis player in the world, you may start out trying and soon find that it’s hopeless—that other people blow right by you. However, if you want to become the best plumbing contractor in Bemidji, that is probably doable by two-thirds of you. It takes a will. It takes intelligence. But after a while, you’d gradually know all about the plumbing business in Bemidji and master the art. That is an attainable objective, given enough discipline… And the game of life to some extent for most of us is trying to be something like a good plumbing contractor in Bemidji. Very few of us are chosen to win the world’s chess tournaments.”
The idea is to compete in an area where you have a reasonable chance of becoming the best in the world at it. And to keep redefining what you do until that’s the case. Then, you’ll reap the financial rewards of being #1.
And it all starts with curiosity. What are you curious about, and how deep are you willing to dig? Answer those questions, and you’ve found your niche.
Thanks for reading, and keep going.
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SOURCES
Naval Ravikant: How To Get Rich: Every Episode
Naval Ravikant: Keep Redefining What You Do
Charlie Munger: Circle of Competence, Fat Pitches, and How To Become the Best Plumber in Bemidji