The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

Eric Jorgenson

Highlights

  • Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it.
  • Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.
  • You should be too busy to “do coffee” while still keeping an uncluttered calendar.
  • Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.
  • Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.
  • “Escape competition through authenticity.” Basically, when you’re competing with people, it’s because you’re copying them. It’s because you’re trying to do the same thing. But every human is different. Don’t copy.
  • The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner.
  • Knowledge only you know or only a small set of people knows is going to come out of your passions and your hobbies, oddly enough. If you have hobbies around your intellectual curiosity, you’re more likely to develop these passions. 
  • If it entertains you now but will bore you someday, it’s a distraction. Keep looking.
  • Follow your intellectual curiosity more than whatever is “hot” right now. If your curiosity ever leads you to a place where society eventually wants to go, you’ll get paid extremely well. 
  • If they can train you to do it, then eventually they will train a computer to do it.
  • We waste our time with short-term thinking and busywork. Warren Buffett spends a year deciding and a day acting. That act lasts decades.
  • Value your time at an hourly rate, and ruthlessly spend to save time at that rate. You will never be worth more than you think you’re worth.
  • Always factor your time into every decision. How much time does it take? It’s going to take you an hour to get across town to get something. If you value yourself at one hundred dollars an hour, that’s basically throwing one hundred dollars out of your pocket. Are you going to do that? 
  • I would argue with my girlfriends, and even today it’s my wife, “I don’t do that. That’s not a problem that I solve.” I still argue that with my mother when she hands me little to-do’s. I just don’t do that. I would rather hire you an assistant. This was true even when I didn’t have money. 
  • if you can outsource something or not do something for less than your hourly rate, outsource it or don’t do it.
  • Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
  • The way to get out of the competition trap is to be authentic, to find the thing you know how to do better than anybody. You know how to do it better because you love it, and no one can compete with you. If you love to do it, be authentic, and then figure out how to map that to what society actually wants. Apply some leverage and put your name on it. You take the risks, but you gain the rewards, have ownership and equity in what you’re doing, and just crank it up. 
  • It’s good to be in a smaller company early because there’s less of an infrastructure to prevent early promotion. 
  • Ways to get lucky: • Hope luck finds you. • Hustle until you stumble into it. • Prepare the mind and be sensitive to chances others miss. • Become the best at what you do. Refine what you do until this is true. Opportunity will seek you out. Luck becomes your destiny.
  • I think business networking is a complete waste of time. And I know there are people and companies popularizing this concept because it serves them and their business model well, but the reality is if you’re building something interesting, you will always have more people who will want to know you. Trying to build business relationships well in advance of doing business is a complete waste of time.
  • “Be a maker who makes something interesting people want. Show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you.” 
  • 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.
  • Very smart people tend to be weird since they insist on thinking everything through for themselves.
  • If all your beliefs line up into neat little bundles, you should be highly suspicious.
  • The more you know, the less you diversify.
  • The best mental models I have found came through evolution, game theory, and Charlie Munger.
  • If you can’t decide, the answer is no. If I’m faced with a difficult choice, such as: Should I marry this person? Should I take this job? Should I buy this house? Should I move to this city? Should I go into business with this person? If you cannot decide, the answer is no. And the reason is, modern society is full of options. There are tons and tons of options. We live on a planet of seven billion people, and we are connected to everybody on the internet. There are hundreds of thousands of careers available to you. There are so many choices.
  • If 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. 
  • Simple heuristic: If you’re evenly split on a difficult decision, take the path more painful in the short term.
  • Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years.
  • What can I do for the next sixty days to become a clearer, more independent thinker? Read the greats in math, science, and philosophy. Ignore your contemporaries and news. Avoid tribal identification. Put truth above social approval. 
  • I just don’t believe in anything from my past. Anything. No memories. No regrets. No people. No trips. Nothing. A lot of our unhappiness comes from comparing things from the past to the present. 
  • 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.
  • Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.
  • Whenever the word “should” creeps up in your mind, it’s guilt or social programming. 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.
  • “Stop asking why and start saying wow.” The world is such an amazing place.
  • Every time you catch yourself desiring something, say, “Is it so important to me I’ll be unhappy unless this goes my way?”
  • Recover time and happiness by minimizing your use of these three smartphone apps: phone, calendar, and alarm clock. 
  • The more secrets you have, the less happy you’re going to be.
  • No exceptions—all screen activities linked to less happiness, all non-screen activities linked to more happiness. 
  • Doctors won’t make you healthy. Nutritionists won’t make you slim. Teachers won’t make you smart. Gurus won’t make you calm. Mentors won’t make you rich. Trainers won’t make you fit. Ultimately, you have to take responsibility. Save yourself.
  • No one in the world is going to beat you at being you.
  • To make an original contribution, you have to be irrationally obsessed with something.
  • When everyone is sick, we no longer consider it a disease.
  • When it comes to medicine and nutrition, subtract before you add. 
  • Meditation is intermittent fasting for the mind.
  • Impatience with actions, patience with results.
  • Anything you have to do, just get it done. Why wait? You’re not getting any younger. Your life is slipping away. You don’t want to spend it waiting in line. You don’t want to spend it traveling back and forth. You don’t want to spend it doing things you know ultimately aren’t part of your mission.
  • You just have to know basic statistics, arithmetic, etc. You should know statistics and probability forwards and backwards and inside out.
  • Courage isn’t charging into a machine gun nest. Courage is not caring what other people think.
  • Before you were born, you didn’t care about anything or anyone, including your loved ones, including yourself, including humans, including whether we go to Mars or whether we stay on planet Earth, whether there’s an AI or not. After death, you just don’t care either.
  • Before you can lie to another, you must first lie to yourself.
  • If wisdom could be imparted through words alone, we’d all be done here.
  • “Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now, and we will never be here again.” —Homer, The Iliad

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