Below are my favorite/highlighted pages of the Almanac of Naval Ravikant. The page number is in the front if you want to look it up for more context. The entire book is fantastic.
THE ALMANAC OF NAVAL RAVIKANT (CONDENSED)
A Guide To Wealth And Happiness
(30) Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it.
If you don’t know yet what you should work on, the most important thing is to figure it out.
(31) Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep.
You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity.
(32) Pick an industry where you can play long-term games with long-term people.
All the returns in life come from compound interest.
High intelligence, energy, and above all, integrity.
Learn to sell. Learn to build.
(33) Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion.
Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.
(34) Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name.
(35) Capital and labor are permissioned leverage.
Code and media are permissionless leverage.
Write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.
Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgment.
(36) Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.
If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.
Work as hard as you can. Who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work.
(37) Keep redefining what you do until this ^ is true.
When you’re finally wealthy, you’ll realize it wasn’t what you were seeking in the first place.
Productive Yourself.
“Yourself” has uniqueness. “Productize” has leverage. “Yourself” has accountability. “Productize” has specific knowledge. “Yourself also has specific knowledge in there.
(38) “Is this authentic to me? Is it myself that I am projecting?” “Am I productizing it? Am I scaling it? Am I scaling with labor or with capital or with code or with media?”
But the better part of a decade may be figuring out what you can uniquely provide.
Wealth is the thing you want. Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep.
(39) The best person in the world at anything gets to do it for everyone.
You want to figure out which one of those things you can provide for society that it does not yet know how to get but it will want and providing it is natural to you, within your skill set, and within your capabilities.
(40) But you can improve sales skills. You can read Robert Cialdini.
(43) Specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, genuine curiosity, and your passion.
(44) “Escape competition through authenticity.”
(45) The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner.
(47) Compound interest also happens in your reputation.
(48) Intentions don’t matter. Actions do. That’s why being ethical is hard.
(49) When you find the 1 percent of your discipline which will not be wasted, which you’ll be able to invest in for the rest of your life and has meaning to you – go all-in and forget about the rest.
(101) Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.
“Okay, this is a habit I probably picked up when I was a toddler trying to get my parent’s attention. Now that I’ve reinforced it and reinforced it, and I call it a part of my identity. Does it still serve me? Does it make me happier? Does it make me healthier? Does it make me accomplish whatever I set out to accomplish?”
(104) “The moment you tell somebody something dishonest, you’ve lied to yourself. Then you’ll start believing your own lie, which will disconnect you from reality and take you down the wrong road.”
I never ask if I “I like it” or “I don’t like it.” I think “this is what it is” or “this is what it isn’t.” – Richard Feynman
(106) I love the blog Farnam Street because it really focuses on helping you be more accurate, an overall better decision-maker.
(112) If you find yourself creating a spreadsheet, the answer is no.
Take the path more difficult and more painful in the short term.
(116) Making it an actual habit is the most important thing.
(129) I believe happiness is really a default state. Happiness is there when you remove the sense of something missing in your life.
Happiness is the state when nothing is missing. When nothing is missing, your mind shuts down and stops running into the past or future to regret something or plan something.
Every positive thought even has a seed of a negative thought within it and vice versa, which is why a lot of greatness in life comes out of suffering. You have to view the negative before you can aspire to and appreciate the positive.
(130) It’s about the absence of desire, especially the absence of desire for external things.
Embracing the present moment and the reality of what it is, and the way it is.
Nature has no concept of happiness or unhappiness.
It is only in our particular minds we are unhappy or not happy, and things are perfect or imperfect because of what we desire.
(131) If you view all of your works as writing on water or building castles in sand, then you have no expectation for how life should “actually” be. Life is just the way it is. When you accept that, you have no cause to be happy or unhappy.
(132) What it means is every second you have on this planet is very precious, and it’s your responsibility to make sure you’re happy and interpreting everything in the best possible way.
(133) I have lowered my identity.
I have lowered the chattering of my mind.
I don’t care about things that don’t really matter.
I don’t get involved in politics.
I don’t hang around unhappy people.
I really value my time on this earth.
I read philosophy.
I meditate.
I hang around with happy people.
And it works.
You can very slowly but steadily and methodically improve your happiness baseline, just like you can improve your fitness.
HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE.
(134) The rest is planning the future or regretting the past. This keeps you from having an incredible experience. It’s keeping you from seeing the beauty in everything and for being grateful for where you are. You can literally destroy your happiness if you spend all of your time living in delusions of the future.
(136) It’s always the next thing, then the next thing, the next thing after that, then the next thing after that creating pervasive anxiety.
How I combat anxiety: I don’t try and fight it, I just notice I’m anxious because of all these thoughts. I try to figure out, “Would I rather be having this thought right now, or would I rather have my peace?” Because as long as I have my thoughts, I can’t have my peace.
A happy person isn’t someone who’s happy all the time. It’s someone who effortlessly interprets events in such a way that they don’t lose their innate peace.
(137) I think the most common mistake for humanity is believing you’re going to be made happy because of some external circumstance.
I’m addicted to the idea of this external thing brining me some kind of happiness and joy, and this is completely delusional.
(138) Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. I like to stay aware of it because then I can choose my desires very carefully. I try not to have more than one big desire in my life at any given time, and I also recognize it as the axis of my suffering.
(139) It’s way more important to perfect your desire than to try to do something you don’t 100 percent desire.
By doing more, you’re actually taking on more and more desires. I find younger people are less happy but more healthy. Older people are more happy but less healthy.
By the time people realize they have enough money, they’ve lost their time and their health.
Happiness is being satisfied with what you have.
Success comes from dissatisfaction.
Confucius says you have two lives, and the second one begins when you realize you only have one.
(141) To me, the real winners are the ones who step out of the game entirely, who don’t even play the game, who rise above it. Those are the people who have such internal mental and self-control and self-awareness, they need nothing from anybody else.
(142) If you could just sit for thirty minutes and be happy, you are successful.
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.
(143) One of the things I’m trying to get rid of is the word “should.” Doing something because you “should” basically means you don’t actually want to do it. It’s just making you miserable, so I’m trying to eliminate as many “shoulds” from my life as possible.
Training yourself to be happy is completely internal. There is no external progress, no external validation. You’re competing against yourself – it is a single player game.
The reality is life is a single-player game. You’re born alone. You’re going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone.
(144) You’re gone in three generations, and nobody cares. Before you showed up, nobody cared. It’s all single player.
(145) You can increase your happiness over time, and it starts with believing you can do it.
(146) You literally have to try all of these things until you find something that works for you.
You can build good habits. Not drinking alcohol will keep your mood more stable. Not eating sugar will keep your mood more stable. Not going on Facebook, Snapchat, or Twitter will keep your mood more stable.
(147) Caffeine is another one where you trade long term for short term.
At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people you spend the most time with.
Are you surrounding yourself with people who are generally positive and upbeat people? Are those relationships low-maintenance? DO you admire and respect but not envy them?
(148) If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day.
(149) I try to get more sunlight on my skin. I look up and smile.
(150) Recover time and happiness by minimizing your use of these three smartphone apps: phone, calendar, and alarm clock.
(151) Bake in the new self-image. It’s who you are-now.
(152) Pick one bug desire in your life at any given time to give yourself purpose and motivation.
It’s very hard to be in the present moment if you’re thinking, “I need to do this. I want that. This has got to change.”
You always have three options: you can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it.
The struggle or aversion is responsible for most of our misery.
It’s to be okay whatever the outcome is.
(153) One hack is stepping back and looking at previous bits of suffering I’ve had in my life.
I can trace the growth and improvement that came from it years later.
I ask myself, “What is the positive of this situation?”
“Well, the Universe is going to teach me something now. Now I get to listen and learn.”
(154) Embracing death.
There is no legacy. There’s nothing to leave. We’re all going to be gone.
You experience your reality as you go through life. Why not interpret it in the most positive possible way?
(155) You’re going to die one day, and none of this is going to matter. So enjoy yourself. Do something positive. Project some love. Make someone happy. Laugh a little bit. Appreciate the moment. And do your work.
(158) All you should do is what you want to do.
No one in the world is going to beat you at being you.
(159) Your goal in life is to find the people, business, project, or art that needs you the most.
(161) My number one priority in life is my own health. It starts with my physical health, my mental health, my spiritual health, family’s health, family’s well-being. I can go out and do whatever I need to do with the rest of the world.
A correct diet should probably look closer to a paleo diet, mostly eating vegetables with a small amount of meat and berries.
We’re meant to have some cold exposure. It kickstarts your immune system.
(162) Have family around us.
(164) Any sensible diet avoids the combination of sugar and fat together.
(165) The daily morning workout.
“I don’t have time” is just another way of saying “It’s not a priority.”
Because my physical health became my number one priority, then I could never say I don’t have time.
(166) The best workout for you is one you’re excited enough to do every day.
(167) “Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.”
(168) Relaxed breathing tells your body you’re safe.
(169) The cold is important because it can activate the immune system.
Most of our suffering comes from avoidance. Most of the suffering from a cold shower is the tip-toeing your way in. It’s not suffering. It’s just cold.
(170) Too much sugar leads to a heavy body, and too many distractions lead to a heavy mind.
(171) When your mind quiets, you stop taking everything around you for granted. You start to notice the details. You think, “Wow, I live in such a beautiful place. It’s so great I have clothes, and I can go to Starbucks and get coffee anytime.”
(172) When in bed, meditate. Either you will have a deep meditation or fall asleep.
Sit there and you close your eyes for at least one hour a day. You surrender to whatever happens.
(173) I recommend meditating one hour each morning because anything less is not enough time to really get deep into it.
(174) They’re trying to get away from the voice in their heads-the overdeveloped sense of self.
(175) You realize, “Oh, I don’t want to be that person. Why am I so out of control?” Awareness alone calms you down.
I try to keep an eye on my internal monologue. It doesn’t always work. In the computer programming sense, I try to run my brain in “debugging mode” as much as possible.
“Well, do I really care if I embarrass myself? Who cares? I’m going to die anyway. This is all going to go to zero, and I won’t remember anything, so this is pointless.”
(177) You are more than just your mind. You are more than just your habits. You are more than just your preferences. You’re a level of awareness. You’re a body.
You recorded the good and bad experiences, and you use them to prejudge everything thrown against you. Then you’re using those experiences, constantly trying to predict and change the future.
(178) The mind itself is a muscle- it can be trained and conditioned.
It only “works” when done for its own sake.
The greatest superpower is the ability to change yourself.
(179) Asking yourself: when you’re thirty, what advice would you give your twenty-year-old self? And when you’re forty, what advice would you give to your thirty-year-old self?
Life is going to play out the way it’s going to play out. There will be some good and some bad. Most of it is actually just up to your interpretation. You’re born, you have a set of sensory experiences, and then you die.
I would have realized the anger and emotions are a huge, completely unnecessary consequence.
(180) You become your habits.
To have peace of mind, you have to have peace of body first.
(181) Being in an internal state of revolution. You should always be internally ready for a complete change. Whenever we say we’re going to try to do something or try to form a habit, we’re wimping out.
We’re just saying to ourselves, “I’m going to buy myself some more time.”
If you’re self-aware, “I say I want to do this, but I don’t really because if I really wanted to do it, I would just do it.”
Say instead, “I’ll set a more reasonable goal for myself.”
(182) Anything you have to do, just get it done. Why wait? You’re not getting any younger. Your life is slipping away.
Inspiration is perishable. When you have inspiration, act on iti right then and there.
(183) Create an environment around you so you’re statistically likely to succeed.
I just want to be the most successful version of myself while working the least hard possible.
(184) If there’s something you want to do later, do it now. There is no “later.”
Science is, to me, the study of truth. It is the only true discipline because it makes falsifiable predictions. It actually changes the world.
(185) You’re fitting in to get along with the herd. That’s not where the returns are in life. The returns in life are being out of the herd.
(186) It helps to start out by saying, “I’m never going to be popular. I’m never going to be accepted. I’m already a loser. I’m not going to get what all the other kids have. I’ve just got to be happy being me.”
Even the people that we say are unmotivated are suddenly really motivated when they’re playing video games. I think motivation is relative, so you just have to find the thing you’re into.
Number one: read. Read everything you can.
Just read it all. Eventually, you’ll guide yourself to the things that you should and want to be reading.
(187) Skills of mathematics and persuasion. Both skills help you to navigate through the real world.
Having the skill of persuasion is important because if you can influence your fellow human beings, you can get a lot done. I think persuasion is an actual skill.
Mathematics helps with all the complex and difficult things in life. If you want to make money, if you want to do science, if you want to understand game theory or politics or economics or investments or computers, all of these things have mathematics at the core. It’s a foundational language of nature.
You should know statistics and probability forwards and backwards and inside out.
The hardest thing is not doing what you want- it’s knowing what you want.
(188) My old definition was “freedom to.”
Now, the freedom I’m looking for is internal freedom. It’s “freedom from.” Freedom from reaction. Freedom from feeling angry. Freedom from being sad. Freedom from being forced to do things.
“Be exactly who you are.”
Holding back means staying in bad relationships and bad jobs for years instead of minutes.
I don’t measure my effectiveness at all. I don’t believe in self-measurement. I feel like this is a form of self-discipline, self-punishment, and self-conflict.
If you hurt other people because they have expectations of you, that’s their problem.
(189) Value your time. It is all you have. It’s more important than your money. It’s more important than your friends.
Do not waste your time.
Don’t spend your time making other people happy. Other people being happy is their problem. It’s not your problem.
(190) Anger is a loss of control over the situation.
(191) I think it’s actually very bad for your happiness. To me, the mind should be a servant and a tool, not a master. My monkey mind should not control and drive me 24/7.
There is no endpoint to self-awareness and self-discovery. It’s a lifelong process you hopefully keep getting better and better at.
(194) A really unbounded, big question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?
It’s personal. You have to find your own meaning.
There is no meaning to life. There is no purpose to life.
(195) What kind of silly God judges you for eternity based on some small period of time here?
(196) 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 of death in the Universe. You’re pushing us towards the point where we end up as one thing.
I never want to be in an environment or around people where I have to watch what I say.
(197) I don’t believe in any short-term thinking or dealing.
All benefits in life come from compound interest.
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.
“Anger is a hot coal you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at somebody.”
They have to work through it on their own. Go be angry at someone else, somewhere else.
(198) If your values line up, the little things don’t matter.
(199) The rational part means I have to reconcile with science and evolution. I have to reject all the pieces I can’t verify for myself.
Rational Buddhism, to me, means understanding the internal work Buddhism espouses to make yourself happier, better off, more present, and in control of your emotions- being a better human being.
(200) Understanding the long-term consequences of your actions.
Building a Fulfilling Life 