specialization

Naval rejects narrow specialization while advocating for specializing in being you.

His famous quote: “Specialization is for insects” challenges the industrial system of human development. He believes humans are naturally multivariate creatures forced into artificial constraints.

“The idea that we repeat ourselves, and we specialize and we pigeon hole ourselves is a modern invention created through specialization of labor in the Industrial Revolution”

The Industrial Revolution created technological leverage but also human specialization. Naval sees people as fundamentally driven by curiosity. “We’re all multivariate, but we get summarized in pithy ways in our lives”. Everyone has multiple skills and niches, discovered through iteration.

The paradox resolves through authentic uniqueness. “Ideally, you want to end up specializing in being you”. This creates specific knowledge that can’t be taught or replicated.

Naval admires the ancient model based on long-term thinking: “I like the model of life that the ancients had, the Greeks, the Romans, right, where you would start out and when you’re young you’re just like going to school, then you’re going to war, then you’re running a business, then you’re supposed to serve in the Senate or the government, then you become a philosopher”. Life becomes a series of phases where you “try your hand at everything”.

His own bear on a unicycle approach demonstrates this philosophy. Naval combines angel investing, building technology, studying philosophy and entrepreneurship. Each skill reinforces the others through compounding.

“I think the reason why people like hearing me is because it’s like if you go to a circus and you see a bear, right? That’s kind of interesting but not that much. If you see a unicycle, that’s interesting. But you see a bear on a unicycle, that’s really interesting, right? So, when you combine things you’re not supposed to combine — people get interested”

Being contrarian attracts attention because rare combinations interest people.

He envisions modern leverage freeing us from industrial specialization. “This idea that we’re all factory, like cogs in a machine, who are specialized and have to do things by rote memorization or instruction is going to go away”. Workers become owners of their output.

Yet Naval acknowledges specialization enabled wealth creation. “Specialization of labor, we trade, that’s built into the human species”. It created positive-sum civilization through cooperation and exchange.

The future returns to creative work you love: “we’re going to go back to being small groups of creative bands of individuals, setting out to do missions”. Small teams enable accountability. Technology allows this return to our natural state.