If my kids only ever read one book, this is it.

I have been reading non-fiction books for about twenty years now and am somewhat addicted to to being the best version of me and getting the most out of life. I’m not saying I nail it but I try.

Some books I finish, some I don’t. In fact, that’s one of the principles in the book I’m about to share. Don’t feel guilty for not finishing a book if it’s not proving valuable.

On my bookshelf I can probably only point to half a dozen must-reads, and my favourite of all time is not even a book in the true sense. It’s a collection of transcripts, tweets and talks by Naval Ravikant.

The book is “The Almanac of Naval Ravikant” by Eric Jorgenson. I’m going to assume you all know who Naval is but if you don’t, hop on Google and check him out.

You can buy the book on Amazon, Eric’s website and even download the eBook for free.

It is split into two parts, Wealth and Happiness and here are a few of my key take-aways:

Wealth

• Making money is not a thing you do, it’s a skill you learn - It’s not about hard work. You can work 80hrs a week in a restaurant and not get rich. It’s about knowing what to do, who to do it with and when to do it.

• Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you’ll be unstoppable.

• Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people and products with no marginal cost of replication. Code and media are permissionless leverage. They’re the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works while you sleep.

• If you can’t code - write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.

• There is no skill called “business” - Avoid business magazines and business classes.

• All of this is hard. It takes decades. Not decades to execute, but the better part of a decade may be figuring out what you can uniquely provide.

• No one can compete with you on being you. Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most.

• 99% of effort is wasted. [I’ll let you read the book for an explanation of this one! - Rich]

• Earn with your mind, not your time

• Solve via iteration, then get paid via repetition

• Play stupid games, win stupid prizes (e.g. status)

• Three BIG life decisions: where you live, who you’re with and what you do.

• Business networking is a waste of time. If you’re building something interesting, people will always want to know you.

• You have to put in the time, but judgement is more important. The direction you’re heading in matters more than how fast you move, especially with leverage. Picking the direction you’re heading in for every decision is far, far more important than how much force you apply. Just pick the right direction to start walking in, and start walking.

• A contrarian isn’t one who always objects - thats a conformist of a different sort. A contrarian reasons independently from the ground up and resists pressure to conform.

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

• What are the most efficient ways to build new mental models? Read a lot. Just read.

• Read what you love until you love to read.

• When it comes to reading, make sure your foundation is very, very high quality [This book! - Rich]

• If you start with the originals (in Math, Science, Philosophy etc) as your foundations then you will have enough of a worldview and understanding that you won’t fear any book.

Happiness

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

• Today I believe happiness is really a default state. Happiness is there when you remove the sense of something missing in your life.

• We are highly judgmental survival-and-replication machines. We constantly walk around thinking. “I need this,” or “I need that,” trapped in the web of desires. 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.

• I try not to have more than one big desire in my life at any given time, and I recognise it as the axis of my suffering. I realise the area where I’ve chosen to be unhappy.

• It’s way more important to perfect your desires than to try and do something you don’t 100% desire.

• Happiness is being satisfied with what you have. Success comes from dissatisfaction. Choose.

• The problem with getting good at the game, especially one with big rewards, is you continue playing it long after you should have outgrown it. Survival and replication drive put us on the work treadmill. Hedonic adaption keeps us there. The trick is knowing when to jump off and play instead.

• 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.

• We are like bees or ants. We are such social creatures, we’re externally programmed and driven. We don’t know how to play and win these single-player games anymore. We compete purely in multi-player games. The reality is life is a single-player game. You’re born alone. you’re going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone.

• At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people who you spend the most time with.

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

This is just a handful of lines in the book that I annotated as I read it. It is full of so much more wisdom, I can’t recommend it enough.

As I said in the title of this post, if my boys read nothing besides this book, it will provide them an incredible foundation in life.

I hope you enjoyed the post.

Rich 😊