You can DM impressive people online and befriend them
Books recommended by Naval Ravikant as a guest on The Tim Ferriss Show podcast
Hey there subscriber,
The past few weeks had been really mentally exhausting for me — I was having trouble figuring out the big picture stuff of my life and was feeling more lost than usual. That’s why I had decided to take a break from publishing this newsletter until I got back to the baseline level of my personal energy.
I didn’t think I was quite there yet but then I saw the subscriber graph of this newsletter:-
WOW! My subscriber base had been growing all this time through word-of-mouth from you guys! This is what gave me the push to publishing this newsletter that you’re reading.
Thank you so much! :) :)
Cool stuff I found in the past few weeks:
How you can connect with impressive people online
In my last newsletter, I talked about Alexey Guzey’s blog and how he has some very good pieces of advice in there.
This time discovered that he is really great at connecting with new people on the Internet and has some really good pointers for how you can do that too —
If you spend time on the Internet, I’m sure you have atleast some role model-ish kind of people who you would love to approach. I’m not talking about some famous actor or CEO, but someone more.. reachable. Maybe some blogger or influencer.
Start with his advice on sending cold emails and Tweets.
If you can demonstrate that you have high potential and/or can be useful to somebody, you should just email/tweet them and let them know about it. If you’re thinking “well, I’m not impressive enough” you’re likely wrong.
And then move on to his article - How To Make Friends Over the Internet. By now, I’m confident that he has figured out how to do this well.
Once you are convinced about cold-contacting the person, remember that It is your responsibility to follow up and send another message in case you don’t receive a reply.
Unless you send a follow up, you’re not even trying. And they know it, so unless you follow up, they will probably just ignore you, correctly believing that you do not even want to talk to them so much.
I found out about these as I was browsing Alexey’s blog in an attempt to absorb as much of his advice as I could.
Why you should dive deeper:
* The long list of examples from his life about how he met people on the Internet will, at the very least, make you believe that cold emails/DMs are totally possible.
* I think, I would have never realised that it’s okay to follow up with people. Doing so doesn’t make you desparate or pushy and is very much needed if you are trying to contact someone important.
Book recommendations by Naval Ravikant
(as guest on the Tim Ferriss Show podcast)Both Naval and Tim are avid readers and they mentioned a lot of their “favorites” and “must read” books during this podcast.
Here are the books that I quickly jotted down for my next reads as I listened to the podcast:
The Origin of Species by Darwin
So if I want to learn the theory of evolution, which I kind of use as my binding principle whenever I'm trying to explain any human action, people read all kinds of blog posts and tweets on evolution and everyone has a loose understanding of how evolution works. But how many have actually read The Origin of the Species? You can get it for $5 on Kindle, and it’s a very easy read. It’s not a difficult read.
The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
When asked - “What is the book that you have gifted most to other people, or books?”, Naval said that it was Sapiens in the last year and The Rational Optimist before it.
Anything by Matt Ridley I thought was really provocative and eye opening.
Poor Charlie’s Almanac by Charlie Munger
..probably the best book on business, quote-unquote, that I've ever read.
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha is about a character becoming Buddha-ish and his journey to do that.. Even though it’s been translated from German, is almost lyrical. It reads almost like poetry. It’s a beautiful book.
Meditation by Marcus Aurelius
Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius was absolutely life changing for me because it’s the personal diary of the Emperor of Rome. Here’s a guy who was probably the most powerful human being on earth at the time that he lived, and he was writing his own diary to himself, not expecting it to be published. When you open this book, you realize he had all the same issues and all the same mental struggles and he was trying to be a better person
Illusions by Richard Bach
I recently read a book which I think a lot of people have read as a child called Illusions by Richard Bach. It’s a beautiful book. Illusions is about a character becoming Jesus and his journey to do that.
Influence by Robert Cialdini
Everybody should read it, memorize it, understand that the way that people influence other people is consistency, liking authority, social proofs, scarcity and reciprocity. Once you know that, any time you’re trying to persuade anybody of anything, you can use those to your benefit
Snow Crash by Neal Stephensen
It’s old but it’s brilliant. Neal Stephenson predicts everything from Bitcoin to the internet to virtual reality to nation states, you name it, encryption. It’s a powerful, powerful book. It’s sad that it’s still never been made into a movie. It would make a brilliant movie.
Why you should dive deeper:
* Because this podcast has a very pro-book-lover theme:
I think reading is so powerful. If you take away one thing from this podcast, just figure out how to read. I say that because there are many skills and gifts that people have in life. The great thing about reading is you can use that to pick up any new skill.
* 2 pieces of advice for learning to like to read:
One is don’t feel the need to read anything you don’t want to read. Read the stuff that’s fun to you. And then secondly, don’t feel the obligation to finish any book. Don’t treat it like a linear tome or treatise that has to be read in order and the way the author intended beginning to end. Feel free to skip around; it’s your book.
* If you liked Naval’s views on reading books, you should listen to the entire podcast. He is an original thinker who talks about a lot of really interesting ideas in investing, meditation, education.
* Tim Ferriss is a really good host.
That’s it from me this week!
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