If you know what you want and what you value, life gets simple. Not easy — simple.

Naval said happiness is a skill. Skills require knowledge. Knowledge requires non-ambiguity. You can’t master something you’re vague about — and most people are vague about themselves.

Ask anyone what they actually want, not the LinkedIn version. Most stall. They reach for a script instead: the big house, the fancy car, the model’s charisma, the movie star’s limelight. Not because they examined it and chose it — because they are herd animals, watching the tribe to survive. Now watch friends’ houses and strangers’ highlight reels, and want by contagion.

Envy doesn’t announce itself as envy. It shows up as ambition, as a sudden “goal.” Someone gets a bigger house, and by next week you’re mentally renovating yours. None of it’s examined — it’s reactive.

The real ambiguity isn’t about the world. It’s about yourself. Skip the introspection, and you borrow values wholesale from whoever’s nearby and successful-looking. That borrowed clarity is fake — it evaporates the moment you get the thing, because the thing was never the point. The envy was. And envy doesn’t resolve; it just finds a new gap.

Real clarity means being able to say plainly: this is what I value, and I know because I checked — not because it’s what everyone else is chasing this year.

So the actual work isn’t outrunning the herd. It’s turning inward, finding what you already have and value, and developing that. Unglamorous. Doesn’t photograph well. But it’s non-ambiguous — and non-ambiguity is what the whole skill is built on.

Not easy. Simple. Which is more than most people get.