The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson

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The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is structured with the thoughts of a “successful” investor and entreprenur. I write successful in quotation marks because this collation of tweets and elaborations by Jorgenson, is an effort at distilling what success can mean. In the conventional sense, we think this means you must be rich, and that is indeed an angle at which Naval angles for, but his chapters on happiness underline there’s a lot more to it.

If something you read makes you feel uncomfortable, maybe it’s worth diving deeper into where the contention lies. For me, it was the quote “If you secretly despise wealth it will elude you”.

I got a few things out of this book, which to me is a sign of a good read, especially in this space. These included:

• your key differentiator are the things you feel like is play to you
• take responsibility and be rewarded

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Notes & Highlights

Wealth is having assets that earn as you sleep.

Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for.

Study micro-economics, game theory, psychology, persusasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.

Study Robert Cialdini for sales knowledge.

Compounding in relationships.

Clear accountability is important. Without accountability, you don’t have incentives. Without accountability, you can’t build credibility. But you take risks. You risk failure. You risk humiliation. You risk failure under your own name.

• what is the worst that can happen?

Equity = wealth

I think the meaning of life is to do things for their own sake.

Coding, writing books, recording podcasts, tweeting, YouTubing—these kinds of things are permissionless. You don’t need anyone’s permission to do them, and that’s why they are very egalitarian. They’re great equalizers of leverage. Every great software developer, for example, now has an army of robots working for him at nighttime while he or she sleeps, after they’ve written the code, and it’s cranking away.

Learn marketing?

Judgement - especially demonstrated judgement, with high accountability and clear track record - is critical.

• personal + professional

Spend more time making big decisions. There are basically three really big decisions you make in your early life: where you live, who you’re with and what you do.

• 3 big questions

What is retirement?

1. Well, one way is to have so much money saved that your passive income (without you lifting a finger) covers your burn rate.
2. A second is you just drive your burn rate down to zero—you become a monk.
3. A third is you’re doing something you love. You enjoy it so much, it’s not about the money. So there are multiple ways to retirement.”

I’m always “working.” It looks like work to others, but it feels like play to me. And that’s how I know no one can compete with me on it. Because I’m just playing, for sixteen hours a day.

For someone who is early in their career (and maybe even later), the single most important thing about a company is the alumni network you’re going to build. Think about who you will work with and what those people are going on to do.

Be a maker who makes something interesting people want. Show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you.

Make the time

It’s actually really important to have empty space. If you don’t have a day or two every week in your calendar where you’re not always in meetings, and you’re not always busy, then you’re not going to be able to think. You’re not going to be able to have good ideas for your business. You’re not going to be able to make good judgments. I also encourage taking at least one day a week (preferably two, because if you budget two, you’ll end up with one) where you just have time to think.

“Microeconomics and game theory are fundamental. I don’t think you can be successful in business or even navigate most of our modern capitalist society without an extremely good understanding of supply-and-demand, labor-versus-capital, game theory, and those kinds of things.

“f you find yourself creating a spreadsheet for a decision with a list of yes’s and no’s, pros and cons, checks and balances, why this is good or bad…forget it. If you cannot decide, the answer is no. ”

• You already know the answer inside you

Purpose -> Likeability of reading.

Foundation Critical

I have people in my life I consider to be very well-read who aren’t very smart. The reason is because even though they’re very well-read, they read the wrong things in the wrong order. They started out reading a set of false or just weakly true things, and those formed the axioms of the foundation for their worldview. Then, when new things come, they judge the new idea based on a foundation they already built. Your foundation is critical.

• correct inputs and why they are correct is an interesting topic

Contentment

To me, happiness is not about positive thoughts. It’s not about negative thoughts. It’s about the absence of desire, especially the absence of desire for external things. The fewer desires I can have, the more I can accept the current state of things, the less my mind is moving, because the mind really exists in motion toward the future or the past. The more present I am, the happier and more content I will be

• absence of desire = contentment

Cravings and Presence

We crave experiences that will make us be present, but the cravings themselves take us from the present moment.

Happiness at rest, peace in motion

Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion. You can convert peace into happiness anytime you want. But peace is what you want most of the time. If you’re a peaceful person, anything you do will be a happy activity.

Heat Death

“Basically, in physics, the arrow of time comes from entropy. The second law of thermodynamics states entropy only goes up, which means disorder in the Universe only goes up, which means concentrated free energy only goes down. If you look at living things (humans, plants, civilizations, what have you) these systems are locally reversing entropy. Humans locally reverse entropy because we have action. In the process, we globally accelerate entropy until the heat death of the Universe. You could come up with some fanciful theory, which I like, that we’re headed towards the heat death of the Universe. In that death, there’s no concentrated energy, and everything is at the same energy level. Therefore, we’re all one thing. We’re essentially indistinguishable. What we do as living systems accelerates getting to that state. The more complex system you create, whether it’s through computers, civilization, art, mathematics, or creating a family—you actually accelerate the heat death of the Universe. You’re pushing us towards this point where we end up as one thing.”

All benefits in life come from compound interest, whether in money, relationships, love, health, activities, or habits. I only want to be around people I know I’m going to be around for the rest of my life. I only want to work on things I know have long-term payout.

You’re dying and being reborn at every moment. It’s up to you whether to forget or remember that.

Created by Apurva Shukla.

• ← Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe