The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (Eric Jorgenson)

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. Gain motivation for self improvement and drive for being more intentional with life choices.

2. Wealth isn’t the key to happiness, but it can help – and you don’t have to work harder for it, just smarter.

3. Health is important, both physical and mental – the brain is a muscle, use it but also let it rest.

🎨 Impressions

This is one of the the best books I’ve read in a while (also in the quickest time, once I finally got around to starting it). The book has many focuses, wealth, cashing in on value you can bring to the table, career choices, happiness, motivation, philosophy. Eric really drives home the key points while getting you so interested in each area that you want to dig deeper (with further reading suggestions often stated).

Who Should Read It?

I think this book can resonate in some form or another with almost anyone. Especially if you feel you can be doing more with your time, but you don’t know where to begin. In fact, if you’re reading this, stop, and start reading the book.

It’s not a huge book so it won’t eat up too much of your time, there are diagrams and illustrations to help you visualise Eric’s ideas and it’s written in a very relatable and to the point way.

The book ends on lengthy suggested reading list, with a focus on self development and physics.

☘️ How the Book Changed Me

• It made me realise that I need to spend way more of my time reading. There’s an infinite pool of knowledge out there.

• It made me generally more comfortable with putting myself out there – people really don’t care if you make mistakes, they’re more focussed on themselves.

• It made me start taking notes like these! With the intention of archiving them on my blog, and potential email list.

✍️ My Top 3 Quotes

• If you don’t own a piece of a business, you don’t have a path to financial freedom.

• Earn with your mind, not your time.

• Don’t take yourself so seriously, you’re just a monkey with a plan.

📒 Summary + Notes

A perspective on life and using time more wisely

‘Almanack’ – A handbook, typically published annually, containing information of general interest or on a sport or pastime.

The general theme of this book is reflection on your life, the choices you make day to day to improve your wealth, happiness and health. It’s not formatted as a step-by-step guide to wealth or happiness like many books out there, rather a collection of information, quotes and interviews around Naval Ravikant’s life.

Key takeaways for me included shifting my focus on where I spend my time and energy (both of which are finite and valuable resources), learning to love the process of growth, instead of the idea of reaching the ‘end goal’.

1. Wealth

Productize Yourself – ‘Yourself’ has uniqueness, nobody can be a better version of you, than you. ‘Productize’ has leverage. Accountability should not be avoided, it should be cultivated. Accountability creates a healthy pressure to deliver to people that you don’t want to let down. As motivation to produce value fluctuates, accountability will remain a constant

Compound Interest – This is huge, not just compounding from financial investments, but relationships with people. Play long term games with long term people.

Build/Own Equity in a business – It’s passive, with the opportunity to compound also. Your money can earn for you whilst you sleep – that’s pretty dope.

Leverage – Develop your skillset to make you unique, or difficult to come by! If others can do it easily, you lack leverage.

Enjoy what you do – Choose fewer things, and enjoy what you do. Work will feel like play, and it’s difficult to be better at something than someone who is enjoying spending lot’s of time perfecting their craft.

2. Happiness

It’s a skill – People don’t often view happiness as a skill, but it is. It can come to some people more naturally than others of course, but you can (and should) decide to refine and cultivate your happiness.

Become a documentarian of what you do – As Gary Vaynerchuk says, “document, don’t create”. Share screenshots as you’re going along. Take photos of your process. Write down your thoughts in a notebook. Whether you share it or not, documenting your process has its own rewards.

Mastering the mind – I found a lot of Part II (Happiness) of this book related to the ideas written in The Chimp Paradox (A game changing book for me – I recommend anyone reads this).

Conflicting wealth and happiness – A strong point in this book – To pursue wealth if often down to a desire to have more, to truly be happy you need to be satisfied with what you have and can’t be chasing that “I need that one more thing in my life, then I’ll be satisfied” feeling. You have to understand that although wealth will bring some level of happiness since it’ll remove a chunk of life’s common stressors, it’s not the most important.

Meditation – This topic can often have people slamming their internal brakes on, me being one of them, though Eric doesn’t focus on the spiritual, instead he focusses on practicality and science – And it makes sense.