Naveen Jain (@Naveen_Jain_CEO) joined James Altucher (@jaltucher) to talk about the future. It's brighter than it looks, says Jain, but we'll need to work smart to get there. Our table of contents.
– The two ingredients of possibilities.
– Fly to the moon by the seat of your pants.
– How to be happy.
There are two things we can do to succeed says Jain; dream big and don't fear failure. This sounds inspirational, but the validity is proven in the advice of others. Let's break it down.
1. Dream big. You need to dream big says Jain. It's the same thing Peter Thiel suggests to people. Have ideas that are new and will change the world, not another social app. It's how Gary Vaynerchuk think about investing. It's how Scott Adams confirmed that affirmations work. It's why Chris Hadfield ended up in space. You need think big.
But it doesn't mean crazy. You can look around and make wise choices says Jain. "Skate to wear the puck is going to be," he says. Technology, for example, has at least one very clear (so far, says Kevin Kelly ) area – Moore's Law. That assumption is that computing power will double every two years. Okay, Jain, might tell you, so what does that mean?
In 2008 Twitter was beset by the fail whale. The image would pop up whenever tweets wouldn't load. It even caused one engineer to sell his shares of the company and get out. That problem was solved as computing power grew.
2. Don't be afraid of failure. When Sanjay Bakshi spoke with Shane Parrish, he said that he counsels his students to become financially independent. Only after this can they make good decision. Financial failure is one of many kinds that people can guard themselves against.
But if you fail, know that it's not permanent. Authors fail all the time. Andy Weir failed after three years of fulltime work to write a good book, but eventually he did. Stephen Dubner failed twice to write a financially successful book, but eventually he did. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg failed to sell Superbad for ten years, but eventually they did.
Failure will happen, it's not permanent, and you can create a net-net positive. Don't be afraid.
Flying to the moon by the seat of your pants.
We don't know and can't know what the next thing will be. Scott Galloway said that he sees Uber as a valuable company not because what they can do, but because what they will do. They can provide last mile solutions for other companies. Uber for _____. Kevin Kelly said that the things in the future that we use haven't even been invented yet. It's amazing that the iPhone (in 2015) is only 8 years old.
Good companies look strange Naval Ravikant said. And you don't need to know what to do when you find it. Just start looking.
If you have a big problem, says Jain, you probably don't want to go to an expert. "Most disruptions happen from outside the industry," he says. It's why Tesla rather than GM is building an electric car that will drive itself.
Experts only give you incrementally better solutions, Jain says. Experts know – by definition – too much. It's why a 12-year-old boy wins a betting pool. Experts lack two things required for big changes, control of luck and innovative framing.
Luck plays a role in many things. The 12-year-old won the betting pool thanks to some luck. Stocks and sports include luck too. Expert or not, no one control luck.
The other thing experts lack is innovative framing. They see things in the areas of their expertise. To a hammer, everything is a nail. To avoid hitting your thumb, you need other tools. Around here we call those tools mental models.
Tren Griffin and Michael Mauboussin speak about mental models quite a bit. So does Sanjay Bakshi and even Phil Rosenthal suggests there is value to having different models in the domain of writing.
Mental models are different tools for diverse problems. Sometimes money is a solution, sometimes it's not. Analytics in professional sports grew from a lack of money. That's another area no one predicted, yet has become pervasive in sports.
Jain says that rather than think in the box or out of the box, find a new box. Use those new tools on old problems.
When Jain started Infospace, he reframed what people assumed a successful internet company needed to be. Rather than build their own services, Infospace created whitelisted services for other companies.
Ditto for the axiom, "information wants to be free." That may be true, Jain says, but people will still pay for it. He created a company that compiled public data and sold it.
Take education, he says. Does education need fixed? Yes. Why? Because we are getting such and such outcomes. Well, was the system designed for such and such outcomes? Actually, maybe it was.
To look at the history of education, the layers of requirements, and the social shortcomings for some children – you could conclude that the outcomes befit the system.
Another example, Jain says, is water. Do we need to create more drinkable water, or do we need to use less drinkable water for non-drinking purposes. Jain says that if we grow meat in new ways, we can use less water.
We did just that with failure. We reframed the assumption that failure is bad. Now, let's do it with happy.
Happiness is not something to be acquired, Jain says, "happiness exists inside us." If you tie happiness to others – my kids make me happy, I love my job, etc – then you give "remote control" of your happiness to others.
Of course your kids may make you happy, but they should be a passenger in the car, not the driver. Jain suggests, find something that you enjoy doing and do it.
All the better if it's a business. "The only way to solve a problem in a sustainable way, is to create a business that is profitable," Jain says.
Jain wakes up early and spends his first two hours of the day reading. But he doesn't try to understand everything. "Maybe I'll understand 70%," Jain says. Learning is a system that builds upon itself. You learn a little bit, then a little more, and then more. It's a positive feedback system.
Elon Musk compares it to a tree. Learn the basics first and then you can branch off to more refined ideas. If you don't understand something, go back to a thicker part of the tree.
Jain says that one day he had read something about biology and understood the first part, but not much more. Later, he was with a scientist and asked about the part he didn't get. The scientist was happy to explain it to him.
Jain says he wouldn't have asked a basic question, but a more advanced one he felt comfortable with. If there is something you want to learn about, just figure out A and B. Then you can ask others about C and D.
Jain's interests at the time of the interview were in the brain and he recommends these books; The Future of the Brain , Incognito , The Brain that Changes Itself , and Epigenetic Revolution .
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