Naval rejects goals. He follows Scott Adams’ principle: “Set up systems, not goals.”
“I don’t believe in specific goals. Scott Adams said, famously also, ‘Set up systems, not goals.‘”
Naval built his first mental model at thirteen. “I kind of came up with a framework of how to be rich, but not by accident, to do it in a way that I could repeat it over and over.” He wanted to “leave very little up to chance” and make wealth creation “deliberate, systematic.”
Goals are desires. Systems are processes. Goals depend on outcomes you can’t control. Systems focus on what you can control: your actions, your daily practice, your environment. This gives you freedom from attachment to specific outcomes.
Systems compound. Each iteration improves the system. Goals are binary: you hit them or miss them. But systems get better with repetition. “Repeat it over and over” builds leverage over time.
Naval’s system for changing behaviors shows this thinking. He picks “one habit or one desire” instead of trying to control everything. This requires discipline, not willpower. “If you start trying to control yourself on a micro-basis, all you’re going to do is make yourself miserable.”
Complex systems resist prediction. Naval draws from physics: “Physics still can’t solve the three-body problem.” “We cannot properly model complex systems.” Evolution doesn’t plan outcomes either. It builds robust systems that adapt.
Scott Adams’ skill stack shows specific knowledge in action. Instead of trying to be the best cartoonist, Adams combined cartooning with business and media persuasion. Naval calls this “that combination of two skills is unstoppable.” You can’t compete with someone “building and marketing something that’s an extension of who you are.” This is true ownership.
Systems protect against lottery thinking. When successful people give advice, “they often read out the exact set of things that worked for them, which might not apply to you. They’re just reading you their winning lottery ticket numbers.” Their specific path won’t work for you. But their systems might. This is why Naval stays contrarian about following other people’s formulas.
Naval’s system design accounts for game theory. “Agents have a way of hacking systems,” he warns. Good systems assume people will game them. They align incentives instead of fighting them. Like code, systems must be robust to bad actors.