Naval Ravikant:
"Hardcore people are not loud. ... They are obsessed, in a quiet, unsettling way. They care about truth, precision, and outcomes. They notice details others gloss over. They don’t tolerate sloppy thinking, weak effort, or half-finished work, not in others, and especially not in themselves.
"Hardcore people are not loud. ... They are obsessed, in a quiet, unsettling way. They care about truth, precision, and outcomes. They notice details others gloss over. They don’t tolerate sloppy thinking, weak effort, or half-finished work, not in others, and especially not in themselves.
Being around such people is uncomfortable at first. Your excuses stop working. Your “good enough” gets exposed. You can no longer hide behind effort or intent; only results matter. But that discomfort is the signal. It means you’re in the right room.
Hardcore people raise the floor and the ceiling simultaneously.
Hardcore things, on the other hand, are problems that resist easy solutions. They don’t yield to hacks or shortcuts. They demand depth, patience, and sustained attention. These are problems where failure is common, feedback is slow, and progress is non-linear.
Startups that try to create something new. Scientific problems that don’t have clear answers. Crafts that take decades to master. Ideas that can’t be reduced to slogans.
Hardcore things force you to grow. They shape your thinking, your character, and your tolerance for uncertainty. Easy problems reward surface-level competence. Hard problems reward transformation.
Most people avoid hardcore things because they threaten the ego. You will look stupid. You will be wrong. You will struggle publicly. That’s precisely why they’re valuable.
Hardcore people on easy problems get bored and cynical.
Average people on hardcore problems get overwhelmed and quit.
But hardcore people working on hardcore things? That’s where magic happens.
In those environments, effort compounds instead of dissipates. Standards stay high without being enforced. Learning accelerates because everyone is serious. You don’t need motivation, you’re pulled forward by the gravity of the mission and the quality of the people."