3 Lessons Learnt from "Navalmanack"
Intentions don't matter. Actions do.
This is what appears to be a sentence uttered by "the angel philosopher" Naval Ravikant in the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, which is a collection of transcripts from interviews, articles, tweets that Ravikant has produced over the past couple of years.
Does this actually make sense? Do actions actually matter more than intentions? In order to explore this idea at a deeper level, we first need to go at the possible first source of this belief: existentialism. Existentialism is an early 20th-century philosophical school of thought positing that we are what we do; not what we say; not what we intend to do. Life's main theme, for every human being, is a state of dread, or complete chaos and confusion. Because of such a dreadful starting point, we can create our own **meaning **by behaving in the world authentically. Existentialism is certainly more than this unexhaustive description I have just provided. One key pillar of existentialism is that we are not born with an *essence *to adhere to, as proponents of Essentialism believed. Instead, our life path is solely shaped by our actions, or inactions, in a development that is heavily reliant on individual responsibility.
When you really want to change, you just change. But most of us don’t really want to change—we don’t want to go through the pain just yet. At least recognize it, be aware of it, and give yourself a smaller change you can actually carry out.
— The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
The superiority of actions over intentions is an argument that can be further strengthened by a real-life case study which we can often witness, or which may manifest itself within ourselves at times: resistance to change and intention to change. In a previous issue, we delved into some of the most common cognitive biases at play in resistance to change scenarios. Oftentimes, despite attempting to convince ourselves and the world around us of a change we want to undergo in our life (e.g. establishing a new habit, being more open in communication with our partner), the change project may be aborted very early along the journey. While competing commitments** **might be the main source of resistance to change in many cases, this is a supporting case for the relevance of what we actually do, as opposed to what we say we will do, or intend to do. This is also one of the main reasons I can think of when it comes to understanding why being ethical is very hard. Being ethical is hard because it requires full authenticity and belief in such a cause, in order for our actions to match our intentions. We may banter about how ethical or socially responsible we are, perhaps also convincing the people around us of such a noble trait. Ultimately, however, it is what we do that determines who we really are.