The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

✅ Don’t copy the what, copy the how ✅ Find one thing that you love doing and can do it nonstop. If you can't give it 100%, then someone who can will outperform you by a long shot. ✅ “Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else to replace you. Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but look like work to others.” ✅ Picking the right direction is far, far more important than how much force you apply. Make sure you’re doing the right thing before you go all in. ✅ 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. ✅ Spend more time making the 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. If you’re going to live in a city for ten years, if you’re going to be in a job for five years, if you’re in a relationship for a decade, you should be spending one to two years deciding these things. They are highly dominating decisions that really matter. You must say no to everything and free up your time so you can solve the important problems. ✅ It’s better to be a failed entrepreneur than someone who never tried. Because even a failed entrepreneur has the skill set to make it on their own. ✅ If you can’t decide, the answer is no. If you’re faced with a difficult choice like, should I marry this person? Or, Should I take this job? If you can’t decide, then the answer is no. There are thousands of other options. Also, if you’re evenly split on a difficult decision, take the path more painful in the short term ✅ Trying to build business relationships well in advance of doing business is a complete waste of time. Instead, “Be a maker who makes something interesting people want. Show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you.” ie Be so good they can’t ignore you ✅ "If you have nothing in your life, but you have at least one person that loves you unconditionally, it'll do wonders for your self-esteem." ✅ ”Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you.” Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. It can only be taught by apprenticeships, not schools. ✅ Code and media are permission-less leverage. They're the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep. ✅ There is no skill called “business” Avoid business magazines and business classes. Instead, study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers. ✅ Reading is faster than listening. Doing is faster than watching. ✅ Work as hard as you can. Even though who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work. ✅ If you’re not 100 percent into it, somebody else who is will outperform you by a lot. ✅ It’s much more important today to be able to become an expert in a brand new field in nine to twelve months than to have studied the right thing a long time ago. ✅ Foundations are key. It’s much better to be 9/10 or 10/10 on foundations than to try to get super deep into things. If you can’t rederive concepts from the basics as you need them, you’re lost. You’re just memorizing ✅ Think about what product or service society wants but does not yet know how to get. You want to become the person who delivers it and delivers it at scale. That is really the challenge of how to make money. ✅ If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day ✅ When we get something, we assume the world owes it to us. If you’re present, you’ll realize how many gifts and how much abundance there is around us at all times. That’s all you really need to do. I’m here now, and I have all these incredible things at my disposal. ✅ The most important trick to being happy is to realize happiness is a skill you develop and a choice you make. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. You decide it’s important to you. You prioritize it above everything else. You read everything on the topic. ✅ Naval doesn’t actually read books, he skims them until he gets what he wants out of it Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it. It’s not really about hard work. You should not grind at a lot of hard work until you figure out what you should be working on. You can figure out specific knowledge by looking back and figuring out what you were doing as a kid or teenager almost effortlessly. Something you didn’t even consider a skill, but people around you noticed. Your mother or your best friend growing up would know. The internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven't figured this out yet. You can go on the internet, and you can find your audience, build a business, and create a product and build wealth, and make people happy just uniquely expressing yourself through the internet. If you are going to take business risks and it might fail, still do so under your own name, it will come back and help you in the future. You have to work up to the point where you can own equity in a business. That’s where the real money is; making money while you sleep. 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. On trust: If someone is talking about how honest they are, they’re probably dishonest. When someone spends too much time talking about their own values or they’re talking themselves up, they’re covering for something. It’s only when you’re bored that you have the great ideas. It’s never going to be when you’re stressed, or busy, running around or rushed. If you have a criticism of someone, then don't criticize the person, criticize the general approach or class of activities. If you have to praise somebody, praise them specifically. Praise specifically, criticize generally. , Warren Buffett Microeconomics and game theory are fundamental. If you’re talking about an old problem like how to keep your body healthy, how to stay calm and peaceful, what kind of value systems are good, how to raise a family, and those kind of things, older solutions are probably better because they have survived for thousands of years and have been filtered through many people. The general principles are more likely to be correct. Happiness is a choice you can make and a skill you can develop. A lot of our unhappiness comes from comparing things from the past to the present Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. Naval tries not to have more than one big desire at any given time and he stays aware of it. Being happy is also being happy with yourself. You can increase your happiness over time, and it starts with believing you can do it. At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people you spend the most time with. The people who are the most happy and optimistic choose the right five chimps Meditation, music, and exercise can reset your mood. Then choose a new path to commit emotional energy for the rest of the day. A personal metric: How much of the day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of interest? Increase serotonin in the brain without drugs: Sunlight, exercise, positive thinking, and tryptophan You always have three options: you can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you could leave it but not leaving it and not accepting it. Death is the most important thing that is ever going to happen to you. When you look at your death and you acknowledge it, rather than running away from it, it’ll bring great meaning to your life. Be aware there are no “adults.” Everyone makes it up as they go along. Value your time. It is all you have. It’s more important than your money. It’s more important than your friends. It is more important than anything. Do not waste your time. Wisdom is understanding the long term consequences of your actions. Happiness = health + wealth + good relationships Health = Excercise + Diet + Sleep Exercise = High intensity resistance training + sports + rest Sleep = No alarms + 8-9 hours + circadian rhythms Be present above all else All the real benefits in life come from compound interest Earn with your mind, not your time. Total honesty at all times. It’s almost always possible to be honest and positive Love is given, not received. Health, love, and your mission in that order. Nothing else matters.