Concept
Specific knowledge
Specific knowledge, in Naval Ravikant's sense, is the knowledge you have that cannot easily be taught or trained into someone else, because it grew out of your own curiosity, talents and experience, and it is what lets you earn more than an hourly wage.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, Eric Jorgenson's compilation of the investor's talks and posts, builds its idea of earning on this concept. If a skill can be taught in a course, someone can be trained to do it more cheaply, and eventually a machine may do it. Specific knowledge is different: it often feels like play to you and work to others, it is usually a combination of things rather than one skill, and it is found by following genuine curiosity rather than by chasing what is fashionable. Naval argues that it is learned on the job and through doing, not in a classroom, and that it becomes valuable when it meets something the market needs. The idea is a heuristic, not a research finding, and it can be romanticised; many people earn well with ordinary, teachable skills. Its practical use is as a question: what do you do well, with less effort than others, that people would pay for?
A real-life example
Cem, an accountant in Gaziantep, spends evenings fixing the spreadsheets of local textile workshops because he finds their messy inventory puzzles fun. Over two years he becomes the person every workshop owner calls, because he understands both the numbers and how a workshop floor actually runs. No course teaches that combination. He starts charging for it, and soon it pays more than his day job.
How to use it
- 1List the things people ask you for help with that you enjoy and find easy.
- 2Look for the combination of two or three of them that few others have.
- 3Test whether someone will pay for it with one small paid project.