Learning with Lisa Tan

FIND AND BUILD SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE

“ When I talk about specific knowledge, I mean figure out what you were doing as a kid or teenager almost effortlessly. Some thing you didn’t even consider a skill, but people around you noticed. Your mother or your best friend growing up would know.

The specific knowledge is sort of this weird combination of unique traits from your DNA, your unique upbringing, and your response to it. It’s almost baked into your personality and your identity. Then you can hone it.

Examples of what your specific knowledge could be:

→ Sales skills
→ Musical talents, with the ability to pick up any instrument
→ An obsessive personality: you dive into things and remember them quickly
→ Love for science fiction: you were into reading sci-fi, which means you absorb a lot of knowledge very quickly
→ Playing a lot of games, you understand game theory pretty well
→ Gossiping, digging into your friend network. That might
make you into a very interesting journalist.

Specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion. It’s not by going to school for whatever is the hottest job; it’s not by going into whatever field investors say is the hottest.

The internet enables any niche interest, as long as you’re the best person at it to scale out. And the great news is because every human is different, everyone is the best at something— being themselves.

If you are fundamentally building and marketing something that is an extension of who you are, no one can compete with you on that. Who’s going to compete with Joe Rogan or Scott Adams? It’s impossible. Is somebody else going to come along and write a better Dilbert? No. Is someone going to compete with Bill Watterson and create a better Calvin and Hobbes? No. They’re being authentic.”

Now, what is your specific knowledge?

Excerpt from the book “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant”