Naval believes most advice should be rejected. Context matters more than universal rules.
“You have to reject most advice. But you have to listen to enough of it, and read enough of it, to know what to reject and what to accept”. Most advice comes from people’s specific situations. It won’t apply to you.
Naval sees a major problem with advice-giving. “This is generally true of most advice. If you ask a successful person what worked for them, they often read out the exact set of things that worked for them, which might not apply to you”. They’re reading you their “winning lottery ticket numbers”.
His approach to giving advice: add context. “Questions like this, unfortunately, don’t have glib answers. It’s highly, highly contextual”. He refuses simple answers to complex questions.
Naval filters advice through three tests: “Is it true? Is it true outside of the context of how that person applied it? Is it true in my context?“. Most advice fails this filter.
“You have to have your own point of view”. Naval builds his own internal model rather than copying others’ frameworks. This protects him from bad advice while allowing him to extract useful principles.
The paradox: Naval gives advice while warning against taking advice. He solves this by emphasizing principles over tactics. Principles transfer across contexts. Tactics don’t.