Naval reads philosophy as mental leverage. “I just read a lot of philosophy, especially at night time before I go to bed”. Philosophy provides the ultimate cognitive tools for building wealth and happiness. The mind is your primary asset.
He treats ancient texts like fitness-tested code. “Schopenhauer, Western philosophy is my current favorite, although I’ve definitely moved around in that one. Eastern philosophy, I’ll read everything from Osho. I know he’s discredited and been canceled, but fantastic—that makes me like him even more. Krishnamurti”. Ideas that survive across centuries carry signal: “Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching. I’m always going through one of these books at any given time and usually rereading for inspiration”.
Philosophy functions as emotional regulation technology. “Philosophy also makes you more stoic, makes you less emotional, and so you make better decisions; you have better judgment”. It creates mental distance from media manipulation. “Deeply soothing to read the insights and observations of those who are considering things that are not of today, they’re not of this week” - an antidote to manufactured urgency.
The purpose is internal scorecard development, not knowledge hoarding. “All of these are basically there to inspire you to self-reflect. And if you’re not interested in self-reflection, if you’re not at that stage in life, then don’t do it”. Philosophy cannot be mechanically deployed: “people try to apply mathematics to what is really philosophy. I’ve seen this happen, where I say one thing and then I say another thing that seems contradictory if you treat it as math. But it’s obviously in a different context”.
Naval applies the iteration principle: keep what works. “The reason to do these things is because they make your life better because they make you more effective because they have some utility to you. If they do not have utility to you, if they don’t make your life better than drop it, it’s useless”. This mirrors his Feynman standard: intellectual integrity means never fooling yourself.
Philosophy compounds through practice. Years of examining unexamined thoughts creates sovereign mental states. The highest leverage activity: understanding your own mind.