Takeaways from “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant”

I finished reading this book last week, below are the takeaways for me from the book

4 min readDec 29, 2024

You don’t get rich by just working hard, you will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get, at scale
You are not going to get rich by renting your time out, you must own equity, a piece of business to gain financial freedom
Wealth is not money. Wealth is an asset that can earn for you, while you sleep
There is no get-rich-quick scheme, those are just someone else gets rich off you
Don’t keep upgrading your lifestyle

If you don’t know what you should work on, figure that out
Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will become unstoppable
Specific Knowledge is knowing something that society can’t easily train to do
Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now
Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability & leverage (labour or capital)
Develop problem-solving mentality

Set and enforce an aspirational hourly rate, if fixing a problem saves less than that hourly rate ignore it, if outsourcing that task comes with a lesser cost outsource it
Value your time, that’s all you have. So don’t waste it

If you cannot decide, then the answer is NO
When deciding between choices, choose the painful path in the short term (short-term pain == long-term gain)
easy choices == hard life & hard choices == easy life
The hardest thing is not doing what you want to do, but knowing what u want
Do not contradict your values, it’ll kill yourself
Come out of the relative mindset

Health is the utmost important thing in your life, when you lose your health, you lose everything else.
Daily morning workout
Eat clean, consider some protein-rich diet
Consider Intermittent Fasting
Do something you like strength training or some sports to improve your physical strength

Develop a love for reading
Read everything, anything possible
Read & re-read books
There is no mission to accomplish in reading, just read & enjoy reading
Even knowledge compounds, most of your knowledge is going to be useless, only 1% is going to help you to build something so keep accumulating knowledge

Happiness is when you remove the feeling that nothing is missing (it's internal)
happiness is being satisfied with what you have
Reality is neutral — happy or unhappy is in our mind
Really happy people are the ones who do not need anything from anyone, they are out of the race. Winning or losing doesn’t matter to them
Being positive itself means we are internally against some negative feelings. Being calmer and being present is actual happiness
Envy is poisonous
Do not seek external validation
Success does not earn happiness
You can increase your happiness over & it by believing you can do it
habits + people you spend time determines your happiness
Acceptance is the key to happiness, accept the reality
There’s no legacy to leave, after 3 generations no one will remember you
You are going to die one day, so enjoy yourself, appreciate the moment and do your work

My favorite quote in this book is The greatest superpower is the ability to change yourself
It’s a single-player game, do not yourself compare with others
Be impatient with action and patient with results
If you view you as cast out by society & have no normal role in society, then you do not owe anything to anyone & you’re much more likely to succeed and provide something new to this society
If you hurt other ppl, because they have expectations on you, it’s their problem and not yours
Don’t spoil your time making others happy, Others being happy is their problem
Courage isn’t charging into a machine gun nest. Courage is not caring what others think
Inspiration is perishable, so take action immediately
All greatness comes from Suffering