The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

Last week I finished an excellent compilation of bit size wisdoms The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Eric Jorgenson. This book is based on Naval's famous tweetstorms on various topics of wealth, money, life, philosophy, technology, startups, angel investments, silicon valley and so on. This is book has contents from many episodes of the Apple Podcast Naval which I started listening to as soon as I finished the book.  

I first heard about Naval Ravikant from my a Roku colleague a few years back and since then started following him in seminars, twitter and so on. He is the founder of angellist, epinion and investors of 200+ companies including some of the best that came out IPO. In this book the editor / author compiles his conversations around wealth and what it means to our lives. I highly recommend everyone reading it irrespective of your occupation. Here are some of the quotes from the book -

• The more desire I have for something to work out a certain way, the less likely I am to see the truth.
• Escape competition through authenticity.
• If you have nothing in your life, but you have at least one person that loves you unconditionally, it’ll do wonders for your self-esteem.
• 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.
• Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.
• A happy person isn’t someone who’s happy all the time. It’s someone who effortlessly interprets events in such a way that they don’t lose their innate peace.
• The closer you want to get to me, the better your values have to be.
• Earn with your mind, not your time.
• The hardest thing is not doing what you want—it’s knowing what you want.
• Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.
• Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.
• Memory and identity are burdens from the past preventing us from living freely in the present.
• The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reverse.
• I would combine radical honesty with an old rule Warren Buffett has, which is praise specifically, criticize generally.
• Intentions don’t matter. Actions do. That’s why being ethical is hard.
• My definition of wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions.