The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson (2022)

Cover photo of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

Many great thoughts!

Highlights

  1. Retirement is the time when you stop sacrificing today for a potential tomorrow
  2. In making money, it helps to have a reputation as an honest person. You should seek a reputation as a moral person. If you keep committing wrongdoings, you will lose self-respect and self-worth. This takes its toll on the psyche. If we don't respect ourselves, no one will respect us, value us, or trust us with money.
  3. Wisdom is the ability to anticipate the long-term consequences of one's actions.
  4. If, of the two options you have to choose from, both seem relatively good to you, choose the more difficult and unpleasant path in the short term, leading to a long term gain (the mind automatically tries to reject it).

Thoughts

  1. Retirement is the time when you stop sacrificing today for a potential tomorrow
  2. In every field, business, science, etc., artists make history. The essence of art is creativity.
  3. It's good to start by working for a smaller company where the structure isn't so fixed as to block career progression.
  4. Types of luck: 1:blind luck 2:many tries, something will work 3:master at noticing 4:master in some field that luck finds
  5. In making money, it helps to have a reputation as an honest person. You should seek a reputation as a moral person. If you keep committing wrongdoings, you will lose self-respect and self-worth. This takes its toll on the psyche. If we don't respect ourselves, no one will respect us, value us, or trust us with money.
  6. Wisdom is the ability to anticipate the long-term consequences of one's actions.
  7. During the decision-making process, our brain acts like a machine to generate predictions based on memories, but it is better to create mental models and rely on them.
  8. If we don't know what will work, it's worth at least eliminating what won't.
  9. The smaller the company, the more each employee feels embedded in the role of manager and the less they feel like an agent at work, the better they will perform. The more closely you can tie someone's salary to the exact value that person produces for the company, the more you give them the role of manager rather than agent. An agent is someone who represents someone else.
  10. If you can't decide, the answer should be no.
  11. If, of the two options you have to choose from, both seem relatively good to you, choose the more difficult and unpleasant path in the short term, leading to a long term gain (the mind automatically tries to reject it).
  12. If you have a problem to solve, remember: the older the problem, the older the solution.
  13. Start reading from the basics, i.e. science, e.g. arithmetic, geometry, microeconomics.
  14. Older books that are still relevant after many years have been tested in the minds of many readers, increasing the likelihood that their general assumptions are correct.
  15. A calm mind, a fit body, and a home full of love
  16. Man has two lives. The latter begins the moment he realizes that he really has only one (Confucius).
  17. When we are young, we have time and health, but no money. As adults, we have money and health, but no time. When old age comes, we have money and time, but no health. Usually by the time a person realizes that he has enough money, he has already lost a lot of health and time.
  18. Desire is a contract you make with yourself, committing yourself to be miserable until you get what you want.
  19. A successful man is usually seen as a man who wins in a game in which we ourselves are involved.
  20. There are multiplayer games and single-player games. Exercising the ability to feel happiness is a single-player game. Similarly, life
  21. The more you judge others, the more you separate yourself from them.
  22. Choose positive-sum games, avoid some zero sum games (where someone has to lose for someone else to win)
  23. Our body can't say no, it only says yes to sugar, drugs, etc.
  24. Meditation allows us to get away from the internal stories we constantly spin in our heads.
  25. Praise in detail, criticize in general (W. Buffett)
  26. Leverage = Capital + People + Intellectual Property (e.g. an app that earns 24 hours).