Thinking about Naval’s “pick an hourly rate”

I wanted to briefly revisit the mind-blowing I recently received from Naval Ravikant to touch on something that I’ve been wrestling with a bit.

He says to pick an hourly rate, and stick to it. If there’s something you’re doing, and you can avoid it or hire it out for less, then do it.

At first I thought he’s speaking about things you don’t want to do.

Unfortunately for my hopes, he clarified by saying essentially, “ you might enjoy cooking, but to get wealthy you need to be single-purposed.”

So, maybe, “wealthy” is subjective? For me, maybe wealthy means having the best food, food you can’t even buy at a store, readily accessible at any time. Or that I can afford to hang out with my chickens and playing with my forest garden all day long if I want.

He makes it pretty clear that attaining monetary wealth is the first most important thing. In the Rogan interview he explains retirement is when you’re no longer “not trading today for something tomorrow” — either by amassing wealth to live off, driving your living expenses down to zero, or doing something you love and it’s not work.

I’m going to stick those things that I do professionally, that I could definitely hire out for less than my time is worth, but want to keep doing into the third category. And wake up early to clean chicken shit with a big fat grin on my face.