Book Summary & Thoughts: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Productize. Leverage. Own. Compound. Peace.
I recently stumbled upon Naval Ravikant…
Unknowingly I started following him on Twitter since I guess you could say I’m pretty active in what would be considered the tech community, I believe I followed him because he shared something that resonated with me, but I never really knew who the account belonged to since there was no profile picture and I never looked too into it.
His name started to pop up a little more so I started to look into it and I learned that he was the founder of AngelList and is a pretty active investor.
Then I started to notice he was on some podcasts and he had a blog and then I came across the book, which he didn’t write, but is more of a compilation of some of his work.
As of this writing, I’ve not yet finished the book, I think I’m about a fifth of the way, I should finish it pretty soon.
How to build wealth…
The main idea here is that you should never rent out your time because well, it’s finite and so are we. Real wealth makes you money while you sleep, while you’re on vacation, while you’re away, essentially it is working for you, and the way to do this is to use leverage.
What is and how to use leverage…
Leverage can come in many ways, but there are some that are better than others. For example, leverage can be people, and this is the oldest form of leverage (think of the industrial revolution) when big business would have men do all the labor. Leverage can also be technology, think of it in the form of code (software), as well as media like books, podcasts, vlogs, etc.
The idea is that each and every type of leverage can be working for you while you sleep. Men can be building stuff for you while you are sleeping. Software (this is probably one of the best types of leverage, think Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg) can be serving your customers while you’re on vacation in Phuket, someone can purchase and read your book, or listen to your podcast, or watch your YouTube videos while you’re out eating dinner with your friends.
In our generation the idea of leverage is, essentially, that we’re able to be at more place than one, this is what we would call productizing because you’re essentially becoming a product and the phenomenal part is that you can duplicate yourself infinitely (especially with internet-based leverage like software/code or media).
How to never have to compete…
I found this extremely interesting and it clicked immediately after I read it.
You need to be authentic, just be yourself. You are unique, and that means no one can be better at being you than yourself.
What he really means is focused on something you love. “It seems like work to them but it feels like play to me.”
In other words, you’re never going to get rich if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing because someone out there loves the exact same thing you’re just working on and wishing you were done with, and they’ll never want to be done with it which adds an infinite amount of advantage over you that will compound immensely.
Be careful what you read…
Information is so amazingly available to us, yet we still don’t know how to properly consume it, or what to properly consume I should say.
We need to be careful what we allow into our brains because although we at times think we don’t pay much attention to it, our subconscious is aware.
To put it in the words (kind of not sure exactly how he said it), think of it like that song that you cannot get out of your head. You may not remember where you heard it but it’s there because you (at some point) allowed it into your mind, and it doesn’t just go away, and if it does, it’s not forever, it’ll come back.
The same goes for books and all other information. Be careful what information you allow yourself to consume.
There are things that have to be earned…
A peaceful, calm mind, a fit and healthy body, and a house full of love. These things cannot be purchased or simply obtained, they need to be earned.
Happiness is the lack of desire…
Essentially all desire leads to unhappiness because it keeps us in a state of constant wanting and thinking, mind peace is the ultimate happiness, accepting this as they are when they are is happiness in the most natural form.
True knowledge comes from an understanding of the basics…
The only true way to understand something (and know if you do) is to be able to break it down to the foundational basics.
In layman's terms, being able to explain it to a child.
ie. Mathematics, in order to understand calculus you also need to understand at a very foundational level basic arithmetic, without the basics you’re simply memorizing and you’re not able to regress.
This applies to everything in life.
If you want to be really smart…
You need to understand the basics of many different disciples.
For example, physics, economics (mainly micro), mathematics, etc.
If you want to boost your level of thinking use Mental Models…
Mental models will help you take a look at certain situations from a higher-level of thinking. (I’m currently reading Super Thinking, you can see what I’m currently reading here.)
The meaning of life is up for personal interpretation…
The meaning of life is whatever we want it to be.
In the grand scheme of things, we’re on Earth for a very short period of time, relative to the rest of the universe, so what we do doesn’t really matter.
Anything meaningful may only be remembered for a couple of generations, and after that nobody will really care. Just be you. Be happy. Accept all as it is.