The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

Tweets, podcasts, and interviews quickly get buried and lost. Knowledge this valuable deserves a more permanent, accessible format. [[The book of Elon]] [[Risorgi]]

Part 1: Wealth

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. Make something people want! (YC motto). [[How do you know how useful someone is? Think about it mathematically]]

If your curiosity ever leads you to a place where society eventually wants to go, you'll get paid extremely well.

Specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion. It's not by going to school for whatever is the hottest job; it's not by going into whatever field investors say is the hottest.

Being able to appropriately convey yourself in English is far more important than speaking seven different foreign languages. One mastered language > different foreign languages.

"Because he goes so far out of his way to treat me so well, I send him every deal I have" - be unreasonably hospital. This is the core of the book "Unreasonable hospitality". [[Unreasonable hospitality book]]

Nothing is ever completely wasted, it's all a learning moment.

People will forgive failures as long as you were honest and made a high-integrity effort. Be honest and have integrity.

"This book is a form of leverage. Long ago, I would have had to sit and lecture each of you personally." Books are leverage. Newsletters might be today's best (?) form of leverage.

The new generation's fortunes are all made through code or media -> [[Personal brand]] concept

Always factor your time into every decision. How much time does it take? If your hourly rate is $1000/hour and something takes 5 minutes, that's $83. [[You don't get rich by spending your time to save money. You get rich by saving your time to make money.]] Basically = outsource everything that costs less than your hourly rate.

I'm much more interested in solving problems than I am in making money. Solve problems, make money. If you're a perpetual learning machine, you'll never be out of options for how to make money.

Creating businesses and making money are an "art". History remembers the artists.

The winners of any game are the people who are so addicted they continue playing even as the marginal utility from winning declines. This is why already rich people can't stop making money. Like Elon Musk [[The book of Elon]]

Things might not happen in the timescale you want, but they will happen.

If you're counting, you'll run out of patience before success actually arrives. Don't count, just do!

It's only after you're bored you have great ideas. This is why boredom, which we have annihilated nowadays, is so important.

Creating identities and labels locks you in. This can be a double-edged sword: both positive and negative. James Clear talks about this in his Atomic Habits book.

There are no permanent solutions in a dynamic system. Redesign.

Charisma is the ability to project confidence and love at the same time. Confidence + love = charisma.

"The best mental models I have found came through evolution, game theory, and Charlie Munger. I basically load my head full of mental models." [[Poor Charlie's Almanack]]. "I use my tweets and other's tweets as maxims that help compress my own learnings and recall them."

Mental models are really just compact ways for you to recall your own knowledge.

To build new mental models, read a lot--just read.

Naval follows Charlie Munger's rule of inversion: eliminate what's not going to work.

If you can't decide, the answer is no. It's either a "fuck yes" or a "no" - Mark Manson

You're biologically built to evolve in tribes of 150 people. When someone comes along, they may be your only option for a partner. This is why breaking up can feel so bad.

Lean into things with short-term pain, but long-term gain.

Read what you love until you love to read. Start by reading what you like, then expand. Also, don't just read, re-read.

At some deep level, you absorb books, and they become threads in the tapestry of your psyche. They kind of weave in there. Even if you don't remember them.

To internalize and organize information from reading books, explain what you learned to someone else. Teaching forces learning. Richard Feynmann spoke about this too.

In the age of social media, we're getting bite-sized, pithy wisdom, which is really hard to absorb. Our attention span has gone through the floor because we're hit with so much information all the time. We want to skip, summarize, and cut to the chase. Over time, we forget how to read books. Stolen Focus talks about this.

"I realized I wasn't actually learning anything. I was just taking little dopamine snacks all day long."

Retrain your brain. Repeat who you want to become. You can. [[The mind doesn't distinguish repetition. Repeat who you want to become.]]

Part 2: Happiness

Stay present. Be happy right now. Constant distractions (notifications) from our phones prevent us from being present.

"One day, I realized with all these people I was jealous of, I couldn't just choose little aspects of their life. I couldn't say I want his body, I want her money, I want his personality. You have to be that person. Do you want to actually be that person with all of their reactions, their desires, their family, their happiness level, their outlook on life, their self-image? 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." - "Same as ever" book talks exactly about this. Incredibly powerful idea.

When it comes to medicines for the mind, the placebo effect is 100 percent effective.

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

The happiest and most optimistic people choose the right five closest people. To be among those, the competition is extremely fierce. You have to be extremely good.

If you can't see yourself working with someone for life, don't work with them for a day.

I only want to be around people I know I'm going to be around for the rest of my life (family?).

To have peace of mind, you have to have peace of body first.

Tell your friends you're a happy person. Then, you'll be forced to conform to it. You'll have a consistency bias. You have to live up to it. Your friends will expect you to be a happy person. Accountability.

Hedonic adaptation is more powerful for man-made things (cars, money) than for natural things (food, sex, exercise). This is particularly interesting. This might be why natural things keep on feeling good, unlike material ones. They say the best things in life are free.

Remember that the news' job is to make you anxious and angry. But its underlying scientific, economic, education, and conflict trends are positive. Stay optimistic. (This is why I don't watch mainstream media).

Increase serotonin in the brain without drugs: Sunlight, exercise, positive thinking, and tryptophan. [[Serotonin is not the "happy chemical", but the exact opposite]]

Always look at the positive. Even if you can't come up with something positive, you can say "Well, I am being taught something now. I get to listen and learn."

Death is the most important thing that is ever going to happen to you. This is why Bryan Johnson is tackling the most important thing ever!

We're not evolved to live in a perfectly sterile and clean environment. It leads to allergies and an untrained immune system. This is known as the hygiene hypothesis. [[The hygiene hypothesis]]

We're not meant to check our phone every five minutes. We evolved for scarcity but live in abundance. Our bodies don't know how to say no. We need to reprogram ourselves for the modern world. [[Humans run on hardware that's remarkably hackable]]

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

Outside of math, physics, and chemistry, there isn't much "settled science".

The interplay between sugar and fat is really interesting. Fat is what makes you satiated. Sugar makes you hungry.

In nature, it's very rare to find carbs and fat together.

[[Sugar is not addictive on its own. Sugar + fat is addictive.]] Outdoctrination (Dalton) talks about this.

When it comes to medicine and nutrition, subtract before you add.

To stay flexible is to stay young.

People do drugs to control their mental state. The attraction of drugs is spiritual.

But all of society does this to some extent. 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, or in gym-bros terms, "the demons". Even working out could be thought of as a drug.

If the brain is like a muscle, I'll be better off resting it. When a particular problem arises, I'll immerse myself in it. [[Hard effort, low-volume workouts - The same for the brain]]

Be impatient with actions, patient with results.

Set up systems, not goals. Figure out what kinds of environments you can thrive in, and then create an environment around you so you're statistically likely to succeed. Same ideas as Atomic Habits.

Nature speaks in mathematics. Mathematics is us reverse engineering the language of nature. Yet another vote for math. [[The book of Elon]]

The moment I figure out it's a waste of my time, I leave immediately.

Charlie Munger says "To find a worthy mate, be worthy of a worthy mate." You attract what you are. [[Poor Charlie's Almanack]]

Try everything, test it for yourself, be skeptical, keep what's useful, and discard what's not. [[The "Explore & Exploit" Life Formula]] [[Wide funnel, tight filter, but when to ruthlessly cut down and when to persist?]]

If wisdom could be imparted through words alone, we'd all be done here. It's not about words but experience.

The democratization of technology allows anyone to be a creator, entrepreneur, scientist. Technology = brighter future. [[The book of Elon]] [[Zero to One]]

[[Books]]