Naval is one of those rare humans who covers everything from money to the meaning of life.

Here are my top 25+ highlights from "The Almanack of @Naval Ravikant" by @EricJorgenson.

(THREAD)

Money vs Wealth:

"Money is not going to solve all of your problems, but it’s going to solve all of your money problems."

"My definition of wealth is much more businesses and assets that can earn while you sleep."

"Money is how we transfer wealth."

Despising Wealth:

"If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you."

"Being anti-wealth will prevent you from becoming wealthy."

"Money is not the root of all evil; there’s nothing evil about it. But the lust for money is bad."

Building Wealth:

"You don’t get rich by spending your time to save money. You get rich by saving your time to make money."

"Everybody who really makes money at some point owns a piece of a product, a business, or some IP."

Work as Play:

"I’m always 'working.' 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."

"I got to combine my vocation and my avocation."

Time & Compounding:

"All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest."

"What you’re trying to do is find the thing you can go all-in on to earn compound interest."

Beyond the Games:

"Any end goal will just lead to another goal, lead to another goal. We just play games in life."

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

Retirement:

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

"Once you can solve your money problems, either by lowering your lifestyle or by making enough money, you want to retire."

Freedom:

"Whenever you can in life, optimize for independence rather than pay."

"My old definition was 'freedom to.' Freedom to do anything I want ... Now, the freedom I’m looking for is internal freedom. It’s 'freedom from.'"

Single-Player Game:

"All the real scorecards are internal."

"The reality is life is a single-player game."

"You’re competing against yourself—it is a single-player game."

Priorities & Big Decisions:

"'I don’t have time' is just another way of saying 'It’s not a priority.'"

Top Priorities: health, happiness, wealth, love, mission

Big Decisions: where you live, who you’re with, and what you do

Choices & Actions:

"If you cannot decide, the answer is no. And the reason is, modern society is full of options."

"Impatience with actions, patience with results."

"Inspiration is perishable—act on it immediately."

Know Yourself:

"You have to find your own path, picking, choosing, and discarding as you see fit. Figure it out yourself, and do it."

"No one in the world is going to beat you at being you."

"Advice to my younger self: 'Be exactly who you are.'"

Find Your Passion & Be The Best:

"You can only achieve mastery in one or two things. It’s usually things you’re obsessed about."

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

"Figure out what you’re good at, and start helping other people with it."

Specific Knowledge:

"I think every human should aspire to being knowledgeable about certain things and being paid for our unique knowledge."

Combo of: unique traits from your DNA, your unique upbringing, innate talents, your genuine curiosity, your passion, your hobbies

Find the Market:

"Society will give you money for things it wants but doesn’t know how to get."

"Your goal in life is to find the people, business, project, or art that needs you the most."

"The best jobs are … creative expressions of continuous learners in free markets."

Productize Yourself:

“‘Productize’ and ‘yourself.’ ‘Yourself’ has uniqueness. ‘Productize’ has leverage. ‘Yourself ‘ has accountability. ‘Productize’ has specific knowledge ... So all of these pieces, you can combine them into these two words.“

Skills:

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

"You want to know how to do something other people don’t know how to do ... when those skills are in demand."

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

Judgment & Accountability:

"Wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions. Wisdom applied to external problems is judgment."

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

Independent Thinking & Mental Models:

"The really smart thinkers are clear thinkers."

"A contrarian reasons independently from the ground up and resists pressure to conform."

"The best mental models I have found came through evolution, game theory, and Charlie Munger."

Learning:

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

"Real knowledge is intrinsic, and it’s built from the ground up."

"If you’re a perpetual learning machine, you will never be out of options for how to make money."

Reading:

"Reading (learning) is the ultimate meta-skill and can be traded for anything else."

"Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success."

"Read what you love until you love to read."

Leverage & Technology:

"We live in an age of infinite leverage, and the economic rewards for genuine intellectual curiosity have never been higher."

"Leverage comes in labor, comes in capital, or it can come through code or media."

Science & Math:

"Science is, to me, the study of truth ... because it makes falsifiable predictions. It actually changes the world."

"Nature speaks in mathematics. Mathematics is us reverse engineering the language of nature."

"Science applied is the engine of humanity."

Rational Buddhism:

"My philosophy falls down to this—on one pole is evolution as a binding principle because it explains so much about humans, on the other is Buddhism, which is the oldest, most time-tested spiritual philosophy regarding the internal state of each of us."

Reality & Suffering:

"The #1 thing clouding us from being able to see reality is we have preconceived notions of the way it should be."

"The moment of suffering...is a moment of truth. It is a moment where you’re forced to embrace reality the way it actually is."

Desire:

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

"The problem isn’t reality. The problem is their desire is colliding with reality and preventing them from seeing the truth."

"Pick one big desire in your life at any given time."

Mind & Meditation:

"The first thing to realize is you can observe your mental state."

"The mind itself is a muscle—it can be trained and conditioned."

"Meditation is intermittent fasting for the mind."

"The one I found works best for me is called Choiceless Awareness."

Happiness:

"The most common mistake for humanity is believing you’re going to be made happy because of some external circumstance."

"Happiness is a skill you develop and a choice you make."

"Happiness is what’s there when you remove the sense that something is missing."

Peace:

"Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion. You can convert peace into happiness anytime you want."

"Real happiness only comes as a side-effect of peace. Most of it is going to come from acceptance, not from changing your external environment."

The Meaning of Life:

"Like all great profound truths, it’s all paradoxes."

"You have to create your own meaning, which is what it boils down to. You have to decide."

"Fundamentally, you have to find it for yourself, so the important part is not the answer, it’s the question."

Very cool for @jackbutcher of @visualizevalue to volunteer his design illustrations for the book https://twitter.com/jackbutcher/status/1306589648748269568

Full detailed book summary available here: https://www.sloww.co/almanack-naval-ravikant/