The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

Books make for great friends, because the best thinkers of the last few thousand years tell you their nuggets of wisdom.

It’s not really about hard work. You can work in a restaurant eighty hours a week, and you’re not going to get rich. Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it. It is much more about understanding than purely hard work.

Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.

Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.

You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity—a piece of a business—to gain your financial freedom.

You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.

Pick an industry where you can play long-term games with long-term people.

Don’t partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self-fulfilling.

Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.

Labor means people working for you. It’s the oldest and most fought-over form of leverage. Labor leverage will impress your parents, but don’t waste your life chasing it.

Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.

Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.

Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.

Code and media are permissionless leverage. They’re the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep.

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.

There are no get-rich-quick schemes. Those are just someone else getting rich off you.

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.

Society will pay you for creating things it wants. But society doesn’t yet know how to create those things, because if it did, they wouldn’t need you. They would already be stamped out.

Wealth is the thing you want. Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep. Wealth is the factory, the robots, cranking out things. Wealth is the computer program that’s running at night, serving other customers. Wealth is even money in the bank that is being reinvested into other assets, and into other businesses.

Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most.

No one can compete with you on being you.

“Escape competition through authenticity.”

The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner.

You really care about having studied the foundations, so you’re not scared of any book. If you go to the library and there’s a book you cannot understand, you have to dig down and say, “What is the foundation required for me to learn this?” Foundations are super important.

Sticking with it for decades is really how you make the big returns in your relationships and in your money.

When you’re dating, the instant you know this relationship is not going to be the one that leads to marriage, you should probably move on. When you’re studying something, like a geography or history class, and you realize you are never going to use the information, drop the class. It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of your brain energy.

Without ownership, when you’re sleeping, you’re not earning. When you’re retired, you’re not earning. When you’re on vacation, you’re not earning. And you can’t earn nonlinearly.

The less you want something, the less you’re thinking about it, the less you’re obsessing over it, the more you’re going to do it in a natural way. The more you’re going to do it for yourself. You’re going to do it in a way you’re good at, and you’re going to stick with it. The people around you will see the quality of your work is higher.

Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now.

You build your brand in the meantime on Twitter, on YouTube, and by giving away free work. You make a name for yourself, and you take some risk in the process.

Whenever you can in life, optimize for independence rather than pay. If you have independence and you’re accountable on your output, as opposed to your input—that’s the dream.

Code is probably the most powerful form of permissionless leverage. All you need is a computer—you don’t need anyone’s permission.

You want to get into a leveraged job where you control your own time and you’re tracked on the outputs.

If you’re looking at professions where your inputs and your outputs are highly connected, it’s going to be very hard to create wealth and make wealth for yourself in that process.

The higher the creativity component of a profession, the more likely it is to have disconnected inputs and outputs. If you’re looking at professions where your inputs and your outputs are highly connected, it’s going to be very hard to create wealth and make wealth for yourself in that process.

If you want to be part of a great tech company, then you need to be able to SELL or BUILD. If you don’t do either, learn.

Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.

Earn with your mind, not your time.

higher leverage, more accountability, and specific knowledge.

Avoiding ruin means stay out of jail. So, don’t do anything illegal. It’s never worth it to wear an orange jumpsuit. Stay out of total catastrophic loss. Avoiding ruin could also mean you stay out of things that could be physically dangerous or hurt your body. You have to watch your health.

Stay out of things that could cause you to lose all of your capital, all of your savings. Don’t gamble everything on one go. Instead, take rationally optimistic bets with big upsides.

No one is going to value you more than you value yourself. You just have to set a very high personal hourly rate and you have to stick to it. Even when I was young, I just decided I was worth a lot more than the market thought I was worth, and I started treating myself that way.

Fast-forward to your wealthy self and pick some intermediate hourly rate. For me, believe it or not, back when you could have hired me…Which now obviously you can’t, but back when you could have hired me…this was true a decade ago or even two decades ago, before I had any real money. My hourly rate, I used to say to myself over and over, is $5,000 an hour. Today when I look back, really it was about $1,000 an hour.

Of course, I still ended up doing stupid things like arguing with the electrician or returning the broken speaker, but I shouldn’t have, and I did a lot less than any of my friends would. I would make a theatrical show out of throwing something in the trash pile or giving it to Salvation Army rather than trying to return it or handing something to people rather than trying to fix it.

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?

Another way of thinking about something is, if you can outsource something or not do something for less than your hourly rate, outsource it or don’t do it.

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.

“Do you want to leave your friends behind? Or be the one left behind?”

some people aren’t necessarily ready to be entrepreneurs, but long-term, where did we come up with this idea the correct logical thing to do is for everybody to work for somebody else? It is a very hierarchical model.

I would rather be a failed entrepreneur than someone who never tried. Because even a failed entrepreneur has the skill set to make it on their own.

Choosing what city to live in can almost completely determine the trajectory of your life, but we spend so little time trying to figure out what city to live in.

You take the risks, but you gain the rewards, have ownership and equity in what you’re doing, and just crank it up.

freedom is my number one value.

Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired.

The winners of any game are the people who are so addicted they continue playing even as the marginal utility from winning declines.

Whether in commerce, science, or politics—history remembers the artists.

I got to combine my vocation and my avocation.

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. If others want to compete with me, they’re going to work, and they’re going to lose because they’re not going to do it for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.

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.

By the way, nobody changes.

Then I just distance myself from them. I cut them out of my life. I just have this saying inside my head: “The closer you want to get to me, the better your values have to be.”

Apply specific knowledge with leverage and eventually, you will get what you deserve.

It takes time—even once you have all of these pieces in place, there is an indeterminate amount of time you have to put in. If you’re counting, you’ll run out of patience before success actually arrives.

Everybody wants to get rich immediately, but the world is an efficient place; immediate doesn’t work. You do have to put in the time. You do have to put in the hours, and so I think you have to put yourself in the position with the specific knowledge, with accountability, with leverage, with the authentic skill set you have, to be the best in the world at what you do.

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.

You have to enjoy it and keep doing it, keep doing it, and keep doing it. Don’t keep track, and don’t keep count because if you do, you will run out of time.

The most common bad advice I hear is: “You’re too young.” Most of history was built by young people. They just got credit when they were older. The only way to truly learn something is by doing it. Yes, listen to guidance. But don’t wait.

Your real résumé is just a catalog of all your suffering. If I ask you to describe your real life to yourself, and you look back from your deathbed at the interesting things you’ve done, it’s all going to be around the sacrifices you made, the hard things you did.

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

If someone is talking a lot about how honest they are, they’re probably dishonest. That is just a little telltale indicator I’ve learned. When someone spends too much time talking about their own values or they’re talking themselves up, they’re covering for something.

I think the smartest people can explain things to a child. If you can’t explain it to a child, then you don’t know it. It’s a common saying and it’s very true.

I would rather understand the basics really well than memorize all kinds of complicated concepts I can’t stitch together and can’t rederive from the basics. If you can’t rederive concepts from the basics as you need them, you’re lost. You’re just memorizing.

Amazing how many people confuse wealth and wisdom.

The direction you’re heading in matters more than how fast you move, especially with leverage.

Any belief you took in a package (ex. Democrat, Catholic, American) is suspect and should be re-evaluated from base principles.

The really smart thinkers are clear thinkers. They understand the basics at a very, very fundamental level.

I used to identify as libertarian, but then I would find myself defending positions I hadn’t really thought through because they’re a part of the libertarian canon. If all your beliefs line up into neat little bundles, you should be highly suspicious.

Maybe you’re a competitive athlete, and you get injured badly, like Bruce Lee. You have to accept being an athlete is not your entire identity, and maybe you can forge a new identity as a philosopher.

praise specifically, criticize generally.

It’s only after you’re bored you have the great ideas. It’s never going to be when you’re stressed, or busy, running around or rushed. Make the time.

Very smart people tend to be weird since they insist on thinking everything through for themselves.

A contrarian isn’t one who always objects—that’s a conformist of a different sort. A contrarian reasons independently from the ground up and resists pressure to conform. Cynicism is easy. Mimicry is easy. Optimistic contrarians are the rarest breed.

“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”

Julius Caesar famously said, “If you want it done, then go. And if not, then send.”

Almost all biases are time-saving heuristics. For important decisions, discard memory and identity, and focus on the problem.

“You should never, ever fool anybody, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

If you have a criticism of someone, then don’t criticize the person—criticize the general approach or criticize the class of activities. If you have to praise somebody, then always try and find the person who is the best example of what you’re praising and praise the person, specifically. Then people’s egos and identities, which we all have, don’t work against you. They work for you.

It’s not about having correct judgment. It’s about avoiding incorrect judgments.

If you can’t decide, the answer is no.

If you have two choices to make, and they’re relatively equal choices, take the path more difficult and 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.

The genuine love for reading itself, when cultivated, is a superpower.

The means of learning are abundant—it’s the desire to learn that is scarce.

I think I always loved to read because I’m actually an antisocial introvert. I was lost in the world of words and ideas from an early age. I think some of it comes from the happy circumstance that when I was young, nobody forced me to read certain things.

Read what you love until you love to read.

“I don’t want to read everything. I just want to read the 100 great books over and over again.”

I probably read one to two hours a day. That puts me in the top .00001 percent.

When solving problems: the older the problem, the older the solution.

I don’t believe in delayed gratification when there are an infinite number of books out there to read. There are so many great books.

The number of books completed is a vanity metric. As you know more, you leave more books unfinished. Focus on new concepts with predictive power.

Explain what you learned to someone else. Teaching forces learning.

Read the greats in math, science, and philosophy. Ignore your contemporaries and news. Avoid tribal identification. Put truth above social approval.

Study logic and math, because once you’ve mastered them, you won’t fear any book.

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 to plan something.

The Tao Te Ching says this more articulately than I ever could, but it’s all duality and polarity. If I say I’m happy, that means I was sad at some point. If I say he’s attractive, then somebody else is unattractive. 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.

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 more present I am, the happier and more content I will be.

Happiness to me is mainly not suffering, not desiring, not thinking too much about the future or the past, really embracing the present moment and the reality of what is, and the way it is.

If you’re into communist or socialist ideas (which I’m personally not), start by reading Karl Marx.

To think clearly, understand the basics. If you’re memorizing advanced concepts without being able to re-derive them as needed, you’re lost.

Happiness is what’s there when you remove the sense that something is missing in your life.

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.

Any book that survived for two thousand years has been filtered through many people. The general principles are more likely to be correct.

You know that song you can’t get out of your head? All thoughts work that way. Careful what you read.

The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reverse.

At any given time, when you’re walking down the streets, a very small percentage of your brain is focused on the present. 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.

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.

The idea you’re going to change something in the outside world, and that is going to bring you the peace, everlasting joy, and happiness you deserve, is a fundamental delusion we all suffer from, including me. The mistake over and over and over is to say, “Oh, I’ll be happy when I get that thing,” whatever it is. That is the fundamental mistake we all make, 24/7, all day long.

When you’re young, you have time. You have health, but you have no money. When you’re middle-aged, you have money and you have health, but you have no time. When you’re old, you have money and you have time, but you have no health. So the trifecta is trying to get all three at once.

The mind is just as malleable as the body.

We accept the voice in our head as the source of all truth. But all of it is malleable, and every day is new. Memory and identity are burdens from the past preventing us from living freely in the present.

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

“Enlightenment is the space between your thoughts.”

The only way to actually get peace on the inside is by giving up this idea of problems.

Every Desire Is a Chosen Unhappiness

Looking outside yourself for anything is the fundamental delusion.

Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.

Confucius says you have two lives, and the second one begins when you realize you only have one.

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.

“All of man’s troubles arise because he cannot sit in a room quietly by himself.”

The more you judge, the more you separate yourself. You’ll feel good for an instant, because you feel good about yourself, thinking you’re better than someone. Later, you’re going to feel lonely. Then, you see negativity everywhere. The world just reflects your own feelings back at you.

Today, the way we think you get peace is by resolving all your external problems. But there are unlimited external problems. The only way to actually get peace on the inside is by giving up this idea of problems.

Envy Is the Enemy of Happiness

If you’re not willing to do a wholesale, 24/7, 100 percent swap with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous.

When working, surround yourself with people more successful than you. When playing, surround yourself with people happier than you.

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, which is a fantastic introduction to being present, for people who are not religious.

Your life is a firefly blink in a night. You’re here for such a brief period of time. If you fully acknowledge the futility of what you’re doing, then I think it can bring great happiness and peace because you realize this is a game. But it’s a fun game. All that matters is you experience your reality as you go through life. Why not interpret it in the most positive possible way?

you are a combination of your habits and the people who you spend the most time with.

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.

The first rule of handling conflict is: Don’t hang around people who constantly engage in conflict.

The most important trick to being happy is to realize happiness is a skill you develop and a choice you make.

To make an original contribution, you have to be irrationally obsessed with something.

It starts with my physical health. Second, it’s my mental health. Third, it’s my spiritual health. Then, it’s my family’s health. Then, it’s my family’s wellbeing. After that, I can go out and do whatever I need to do with the rest of the world.

World’s simplest diet: The more processed the food, the less one should consume.

The harder the workout, the easier the day.

“Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.”

If you make the easy choices right now, your overall life will be a lot harder.

No one in the world is going to beat you at being you. You’re never going to be as good at being me as I am. I’m never going to be as good at being you as you are.

Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit.

What I find is 90 percent of thoughts I have are fear-based. The other 10 percent may be desire-based.

You don’t make any decisions. You don’t judge anything. You just accept everything. If I do that for ten or fifteen minutes while walking around, I end up in a very peaceful, grateful state. Choiceless Awareness works well for me.

When everyone is sick, we no longer consider it a disease.

It’s a state of joy and bliss and peace. Once you have it, you don’t want to give it up. If you can get a free hour of bliss every morning just by sitting and closing your eyes, that is worth its weight in gold. It will change your life.

People chasing thrills in action sports or flow states or orgasms—any of these states people strive for are people trying to get out of their own heads. They’re trying to get away from the voice in their heads—the overdeveloped sense of self.

An emotion is our evolved biology predicting the future impact of a current event. In modern settings, it’s usually exaggerated or wrong.

When in bed, meditate. Either you will have a deep meditation or fall asleep. Victory either way.

At least if you’re self-aware, you can think, “‘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.”

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.

I don’t believe in specific goals. Scott Adams famously said, “Set up systems, not goals.” Use your judgment to figure out what kinds of environments you can thrive in, and then create an environment around you so you’re statistically likely to succeed.

I’m not going to be the most successful person on the planet, nor do I want to be. I just want to be the most successful version of myself while working the least hard possible. I want to live in a way that if my life played out 1,000 times, Naval is successful 999 times. He’s not a billionaire, but he does pretty well each time. He may not have nailed life in every regard, but he sets up systems so he’s failed in very few places.

Social approval is inside the herd. If you want social approval, definitely go read what the herd is reading. It takes a level of contrarianism to say, “Nope. I’m just going to do my own thing. Regardless of the social outcome, I will learn anything I think is interesting.”

Ninety-five percent of what my brain runs off and tries to do, I don’t need to tackle in that exact moment. If the brain is like a muscle, I’ll be better off resting it, being at peace.

Courage isn’t charging into a machine gun nest. Courage is not caring what other people think.

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. Your time is all you have. Do not waste your time.

People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom.

internal state of revolution.

Lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower, fasting, meditating, and exercising… Up against armies of scientists and statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, and medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games, and addictive drugs.

Impatience with actions, patience with results.

It takes time for great products to emerge as you polish away, polish away, polish away.

If there’s something you want to do later, do it now. There is no “later.”

I don’t believe in any short-term thinking or dealing. If I’m doing business with somebody and they think in a short-term manner with somebody else, then I don’t want to do business with them anymore. 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.

How do you define wisdom? Understanding the long-term consequences of your actions.

If you hurt other people because they have expectations of you, that’s their problem. If they have an agreement with you, it’s your problem.

There is actually nothing but this moment. No one has ever gone back in time, and no one has ever been able to successfully predict the future in any way that matters. Literally, the only thing that exists is this exact point where you are in space at the exact time you happen to be 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.”

I’m very famous for being rude at parties, events, dinners, where the moment I figure out it’s a waste of my time, I leave immediately.

Inspiration is perishable—act on it immediately.

if you’re not spending your time doing what you want, and you’re not earning, and you’re not learning—what the heck are you doing?

Don’t spend your time making other people happy. Other people being happy is their problem. It’s not your problem.

A taste of freedom can make you unemployable.

entropy

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.

Honesty is a core, core, core value. By honesty, I mean I want to be able to just be me. I never want to be in an environment or around people where I have to watch what I say. If I disconnect what I’m thinking from what I’m saying, it creates multiple threads in my mind.

Anyone around whom I can’t be fully honest, I don’t want to be around.

Before you can lie to another, you must first lie to yourself.

I only believe in peer relationships. I don’t believe in hierarchical relationships. I don’t want to be above anybody, and I don’t want to be below anybody. If I can’t treat someone like a peer and if they can’t treat me like peer, I just don’t want to interact with them.

“Anger is a hot coal you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at somebody.”

The older the question, the older the answers.

The truth is, I don’t read for self-improvement. I read out of curiosity and interest.

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch Not the easiest read, but it made me smarter.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley

Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb

Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher by Richard Feynman