muthiyaalfah.com

Summary

Collection of wisdom by Naval Ravikant, curated by Eric Jorgenson. Naval is the CEO and co-founder of AngelList. He is the epitome of the right balance of work and life as he leads an inspiring life between world-class entrepreneur and modern day philosopher. Naval shares unique and holistic perspectives on wealth and happiness. The world is full of hustle culture and winning at all cost, his advices offer a model of being successful without being miserable. Most interestingly all of Naval’s ideas are not for business as he takes no profit from the book. Great book recommendations by Naval at the end of the book.

Highlights:

How to be wealthy?

1. Figure out what you can provide for society that it doesn’t know yet how to get it → scarcity? Unique?
2. Provide those things within your skillset and capabilities
3. Scale it

• Wealth is the businesses and assets that earn while you sleep.
• Money is how we transfer the wealth, the ability to have credits and debits of people’s time.

Skills for getting rich:

• Become a perpetual learner and know how to learn anything you want to learn
  • Learn to love to read → Read everything that you can
  • The means of learning are abundant, the disire to learn is scacrce
• Foundations are important, no need to be deep unless something you are obsessed with
  • Basic arithmetic and numeratic are more important in life than doing calculus
  • Having skills of persuassion is imporant because if you can influence another human beings, you can get a lot done → Able to convey yourself using ordinary English is far more important than being able to write poetry
  • It’s much better to be 9/10 or 10/10 on foundations than try to get super deep into things → You don’t need to be deep in something because otherwise you will be a mile wide and an inch deep and you won’t get what you want out of life

Take on Accountability

• Embrace accountability → take business risks under your own name → society will reward with responsibility, equity, and leverage

Build or buy equity in a business

• Equity → ownership vs wage work
• Without equity inputs are tied to outputs
• Still can earn money linearly, but won’t give financial freedom
• Route to wealth is through owning a piece of business, investing or creating; it doesn’t come through the hours.

Find a Position of Leverage

Following genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now. Three types of leverage:

• Labor → other humans working for you
• Money → every time you make a decision, you multiply with money
• Products with no marginal cost of replication → multiply efforts without involving other humans and without needing money from other humans

Building judgment → no shortcut to smart

• Without hard work, you’ll develop neither judgment nor leverage
• The direction you are heading matters more than how fast you move, especially with leverage

Happiness is learned

• Happiness is the state when nothing is missing → Happiness is not suffering, not desiring, not thinking about the future or the past; but embracing the present moment and the reality of what is, and the way it is
• It is only in our particular minds we are unhappy or not happy, and the things are perfect or imperfect because of what we desire
• Happiness is a choice you make and skills you develop

Happiness requires presence → a lot of our unhappiness comes from comparing things from the past to the presents

Happiness requires peace

• Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion → you can convert peace into happiness anytime → If you’re a peaceful person, anything you do will be a happy activity
• The enemy of peace of mind is expectations drilled into you by society and other people
  • The reality of life is single-player game → you’re competing against yourself, no external progress, no external validation
  • Envy is the enemy of happiness → if you’re not willing to trade 100% of somebody you envy, there is no point in being jealous

Success does not earn happiness

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

How does someone build the skills of happiness?

• At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people who you spend the most with → build skills that will increase long-term hapiness
• Surround yourself with happy and optimistic people
• If you’re present, you’ll realize how many gifts and how much abundance there is around us at all times
• The most important trick to being happy is to realize happiness is a skill you develop and choice you make.

Find Happiness in Acceptance

• If you want to change it, then it is a desire → it will cause suffering until you successfully change it
• Acceptance is being okay whatever the outcome is → we don’t always get what we want, but sometimes it is happening for the best
• Your life is a firefly in a blink in a night. You’re here for such a brief period of time. If you fully acknowledge the futility of what you’re doing, it can bring great happiness and peace because you realize this is a game. But it’s a fun game. All that matters is you experience your reality as you go through life.