If you want to make money you have to get paid at scale. Why you (and not someone else) is specific knowledge. At scale is leverage. And you getting paid at all is accountability.

If you can be trained for it, so can someone else — and eventually a computer or robot. Your returns then devolve into your cost of training plus a normal return on that training. Specific knowledge, by definition, cannot be taught in a classroom.

Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your innate talents, genuine curiosity, and passion — not by chasing the hottest job or whatever field investors are pushing. It often sits at the edge of knowledge, where things are still being figured out.

In domains of ideas with high leverage, the person who is right 90% of the time gets paid hundreds of times more than the person right 80% of the time. Small edges in judgment compound brutally, which is why genuine obsession matters — a half-hearted competitor loses by orders of magnitude.

Building your specific knowledge will feel like play to you but look like work to others. If you're trying to force yourself to get good at something — like an introvert grinding to become a salesperson — you're probably in the wrong domain.

A psychology degree turns a natural salesperson into a much better one (it's leverage on top of existing specific knowledge), but it won't manufacture sales ability in someone who never had it. Training amplifies specific knowledge; it doesn't create it.

Naval wanted to be an astrophysicist, but his mother — overhearing him critique the local pizza parlor's pricing and ordering process on every walk — told him at 15 he'd go into business. Your specific knowledge is often observed by others and revealed in situations before you can see it yourself.