Today we are going to talk about the book, The Almanac Of Naval Ravikant, written by Eric Jorgenson. Getting rich is not just about luck; Happiness is not just a quality we are born with. These aspirations may seem out of reach, but building wealth and being happy are skills we can learn. So what are these skills, and how do we learn them? What are the principles that guide our efforts? What does progress really look like?
Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher and investor who has influenced the world with his principles for building wealth and long term happiness. The Almanac Of Naval Ravikant is a collection of knowledge and experience of last 10 years of Naval. This is not a how to book or step by step scheme. Instead, you'll learn, through the Navy's own words, how to chart your own unique path toward a dignified, prosperous life (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
We will discuss this complete summary in two parts. In which we will first learn in detail about wealth and then we will learn about happiness (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Funds
What is the difference between Wealth and money. Money is how we transfer our wealth. Money is credits earned from society. Wealth is something that we all want. Wealth is such an asset, which gives you money even while you are sleeping. Wealth is also a computer program, which works even at night. Even the money lying in the bank is wealth. So the definition of wealth is business and assets, which are earning money even while you sleep (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Find specific knowledge and build it. Specialized knowledge cannot be learned, but it can be learned from. When Naval talks about specific knowledge, he means knowing that thing, which you were doing in your childhood or your teens, without any effort. Something that you didn't consider a skill, but people around you noticed (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Your mother or your best friend will know about your specific knowledge. Wisdom is a combination of your unique habits, which are in your DNA, your unique upbringing, and your response to all of these things. It is found within your personality and identity.
The first person who pointed out Naval's special knowledge was his mother. This was the time when Naval was 16 years old and he was telling his friends that he would become an astrophysicist and his mother said "No, you will go into business". Naval said, "What is my mother saying, I will go into business?"
His mother knew what she was saying, because she had noticed her son very closely. Specific knowledge comes by pursuing your inner talent and your genuine curiosity. It is not that they go into whatever career is trendy or go into whatever business investors are saying.
If you have ever invested your money, or read anything about finance, then you must have come across the term – “compounding.” Compound interest is not only used in the world of finance, but it is used everywhere in life. All returns in life, be it in knowledge, relationships or wealth, come from compound interest only (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
For proof of this, you can look at the biggest roles of the society, why someone is the CEO of such a big company, or how someone is handling so many crores of rupees. The answer is that people believe in them. They are trusted because the relationships they have made have become compound, meaning they have become 10 times or 20 times.
Taking Accountability: To get rich, you will need leverage. Leverage can be labor, money, code or media. But a lot of these things, people have to give you. To take some of these things like labor or capital, you have to convince people and that's where the concept of accountability comes in.
Accountability is like a double edged sword. When things go well, you can take the credit, but if things don't go well, you have to take the failure on your own (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
That means you will have to listen to everything negative. We are still socially hard wired not to fail in public on our own behalf. People who have the ability to fail in front of the public, they actually gain a lot of power. People should take more responsibility, because in modern society the downside is not that much. Even, in a good ecosystem, even personal bankruptcy ends (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Create or buy equity in a business. Why is owning equity in a business important to becoming rich? The answer is, being a boss vs doing a job. If you get money by giving your time, even if you are a lawyer or a doctor, you will earn some money, but you will not be able to earn money that will make you financially free. You will not have passive income and you will not be able to earn money while sleeping. Without ownership, your outputs are closely tied to your inputs (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Almost every salary job, even if it has high salary, like lawyer or doctor, you will still get paid for the number of hours you work. If you see those doctors who have become rich, we mean real rich, they have become because they have opened a business. He has now started private practice. And either they make some kind of medical device or they make some intellectual property (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Find positions to leverage. We are living in an age of unlimited leverage and if you follow your true curiosity, then you can make a lot of money. It is better for your career to follow your genuine intellectual curiosity than to follow something that is making money today. You must know how to do something when it is in demand, and other people do not know how to do it (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Think of a product or service that society needs, but they don't know how to get it. Like Steve Jobs saw in 2007, that people need smart phone, but people do not know how to make it. You just keep developing your skills and wait for the time when something new comes in the world, you have the skills they need. Till then you make your name and your brand on youtube, on twitter, on Instagram. Because when the time comes, you will be able to do the same thing with maximum leverage (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Leverage के 3 broad classes है:
The first form of leverage is labor - where other people work for you. This is the oldest form of Leverage and in this modern world, it is not that much good. It is very difficult to manage other people, it requires very good leadership skills (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Second leverage is a good form of Money Leverage. It means, that when you take any decision, you multiply it with money. Managing money is easier than managing people.
And the last form of Leverage - the most democratic form - is this: "That which does not cost money to repeat" includes books, media, movies, code. A developer created the app and now it is running forever. A YouTuber made a video once and now millions of people are watching it (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Learn to sell, learn to make. If you can do both, then nothing can stop you. These two are 2 different categories. One is to make a product, it is difficult. Design can come inside it; development can come; manufacturing may come. The definition of builder is different in every industry. Like there is a CTO in the tech industry (The Almanack of Naval Ravikant).
In laundry business, he is the one who is providing laundry service. The second category is sales, selling is a very broad term. Selling doesn't just mean selling to customers. It can also mean marketing, it can also mean talking. It is like a big umbrella (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
There are 2 basic games that people play in their lives. The first is the game of money. Money game people play because money does not solve all your problems, but it solves your money problems. But at the same time, there are a lot of people who, deep down, believe that they can't make money. They do not want to allow any wealth creation to happen (The Almanack of Naval Ravikant).
So they attack the whole enterprise and say that- “Earning money is useless. We should not do all this. But they are playing another game, which is called status game.
Status is a zero-sum game, meaning no one benefits from it. This is a very old game, we have been playing it since the time of the forests. Who came number 1? Who came number 2? Who came number 3? And in order for number 3 to go to number 2, number 2 has to be removed. The problem with the Status game is that you have to put someone else down to win (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Find work that feels like play. We lived like hunters and then we all worked for ourselves. But after agriculture came, we slowly started entering the status game. Industrial revolution and factories made us more hierarchical, because not every person can run his own factory. But now, because of the internet, we're going back to a time where more and more people can work for themselves.
Your love for money: Money is not the root of all trouble; There is nothing bad in money. But it is bad to love money and to be obsessed with money only. It is not bad because of what the society will say to you. This is bad for you. To love money is bad because this love will never end (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
If you love money and you earn it, then you will never have enough. You will never have enough because this desire for money does not end with any number. When you make money, then you want more money, and then you are afraid that you may lose that money. The best way to stay away from this constant love of money is not to upgrade your lifestyle every time you earn money (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Pleasure
We are always caught up in whether "we want this" or "we want that". Happiness is such a state, where nothing is missing. Meaning whatever you want, as much as you want, you have it. When you have nothing missing, then your mind becomes calm and stops regretting yesterday and planning for tomorrow (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
People mistakenly believe that happiness means positive thoughts and positive actions. but it's not like that. Happiness is not about positive thoughts, nor is it about negative thoughts. Happiness means the absence of desires, especially desires for external things.
Happiness requires presence. At any given time when you are moving, a very small percentage of your mind is in the present moment. The rest of the mind is either thinking about yesterday, or planning for tomorrow.
Because of this you do not get the real experience. It is preventing you from seeing the beauty in everything around you and you will never be able to be grateful for the moment wherever you are. If you just keep thinking about the future, you will really destroy all your happiness (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Today we got a new car: Now I'm waiting for the car to come home, and every night we read about that car, everywhere. Why do we do all this? Because it is just a car, which is of little help in our life. We know that as soon as the car comes home, we will stop thinking about it. The thing is that we have become addicted to external things (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
And we have started thinking that external things will give us happiness and it is not so at all. “I will be happy when I have that thing” whatever that thing may be. This is a big mistake, which we keep doing all day long.
All the problems of a person come because he cannot be peacefully even in a room. If you can just sit quietly for 30 minutes and be happy, you are successful. This is a very powerful place, but only a few people can reach here. If you are calm inside and out, it will bring you happiness (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
I don't think life is difficult, rather we have made it difficult. It was very difficult for Naval to rise above the emotion of jealousy. It's a toxic emotion because, at the end of the day, you can't get rid of jealousy. And the one you are burning seeing, it didn't matter to him either. He is still successful, and looking good (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Happiness is also a skill, like nutrition is a skill, dieting is a skill, being fit is a skill, earning money is a skill. Similarly, happiness is also a skill. It is not something you are born with. Now how can one build the skill of happiness? You can build good habits and they will help you be happier. Not eating sugar can keep your mood stable (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Abstaining from alcohol can make your mood more stable. And yes, playing video games can give you happiness now, but in the long term, it is spoiling your happiness. The main thing is that you have to replace your bad habits with good habits, which you do without thinking. At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people you spend the most time with (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Here Naval tells about one of his persian friend, whose name is Behzad. He loves life very much and he does not talk at all with people who are not happy. If you ask Behzad what his secret is, he would say “stop asking why and start wow”. The world is such a wonderful place. We humans take everything lightly.
Look what you and I are doing right now, we are all at home, under the roof, you are reading this summary. We both would have been two monkeys sitting in a forest, watching the sun set. If you stay in the present moment, you will be able to see how many gifts we have all the time. All we have to do is (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Here, Naval reveals the habits that helped him achieve happiness. The first habit is meditation. The purpose of meditation is how the mind works. Meditation simply means being aware of each and every moment. Meaning if you are walking, concentrate on walking. Naval also says that working out every day has made him a happier person. If you have peace of body, it will be easy to calm the mind.
How can we change habits now? Take a habit. Make wishes for it, visualize it, define a path for it. Identify needs, triggers and substitutes. Tell your friends and track a lot (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
In any situation in life, we have 3 choices: either you can change the situation, or you can accept it, or you can leave it. If you could change that situation, that would be a wish. Until you change that situation, it will haunt you. For example, if someone is poor, he will desire to be rich and will continue to suffer until he changes his circumstances (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
What is not a good option is to sit and wish that you will change this situation but not to change it. You want to leave him, but you are not able to leave. The phrase Naval uses is just one word, "Accept."
So how is acceptance? It is absolutely right, what will be the result of what you have done. We don't always get what we want, but sometimes it's for the best. As it is written in Gita, whatever is happening, is happening for good. It is very difficult to get the attitude of acceptance. So here Naval shares some of his hacks, which have helped him a lot in accepting situations.
The first hack is to look back, meaning when you were in a situation like this before, what happened after that. What happened the last time you failed in business? What happened the last time you had health problems? You can see the improvement and growth that has come from that position.
He tells another hack. When a bad situation arises, he asks himself, what is positive in that situation. Mostly positive in every single situation. If you can't find the positive in a situation, you can tell yourself, “Now, the universe is about to teach me something new. Now I have to listen to him in peace (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Why is meditation so powerful? Your breath is one of the places where your automatic nervous system meets the voluntary nervous system. It is involuntary, but you can control it too. Meditation is intermittent fasting for the mind (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Just as the body becomes heavy with too much sugar, similarly the mind also becomes heavy with too much distraction. When we spend time alone, in an undisturbed state, we become fit with mental fat because of it. Here Naval gives a life hack: Meditate when you are in bed, either deep meditation will happen or you will fall asleep. There is benefit from both the things.
Habit
I do not believe in specific goals. Scott Adams says, “Set up the system, not the goal.” Use your judgment to find out what kind of environment you can thrive in and then create an environment around yourself that makes you statistically successful (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Naval says, he will not be able to become the most successful person on the planet, nor does he want to be. They just want to be the most successful version of themselves. He wants to live in such a way that if his life were to be played 1000 times, Naval would be successful 999 times. He's not a billionaire, but he does well all the time. He did not get success in every aspect of life, he just set up systems, due to which he failed at some places (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
When Naval was young, he used to value freedom a lot. Freedom was one of his core values, it still is. It is still in their top 3 values, but now the definition of freedom is different. His whole definition of "freedom" was the freedom to do whatever he wanted (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Freedom to do what you want and when you want. Now the freedom they are seeking is inner freedom. This is "freedom from." Freedom from reaction. Freedom from being angry, freedom from being sad. Now they are looking for "freedom from", but earlier they were looking for "freedom to" (The Almanack of Naval Ravikant).
Freedom from expectations: If you hurt other people because they have expectations from you, then that is their problem. If you have entered into an agreement with them, then that is your problem. But if they have expectations from you, then that is entirely their problem. It has nothing to do with you. There will be a lot of expectations from his life. The sooner you eliminate their expectations, the better. Value your time, that's all you have (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
It is more important than your money, it is more important than your friends, it is more important than everything. Don't waste your time. This does not mean that you cannot relax. It's not a waste of time as long as you're doing what you love. But if you are not spending your time doing the things you want to and you are not earning or learning, then what are you doing? Don't spend your time in pleasing other people (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Freedom From Anger: What Is Anger? Anger means not having control over the situation. Anger is a contract you make with yourself to remain in physical and mental pain until the situation changes (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Freedom from uncontrolled thinking: One big habit that Naval has been working on is turning off his "monkey mind". When we were children, we were in a blank state. We mostly live in the present. We live in a place that Naval calls the “real world”. Aspirations started with growing up. You started thinking too much, started building an identity and also started building an ego (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
If you go somewhere and there are a thousand people there, at a given time everyone will be talking to themselves. Whatever he is seeing, he must be continuously judging it. They are living in the world of fantasy, what is going to happen tomorrow. It may be nice when solving a problem, but Naval says it's pretty useless for our happiness. For Naval the mind should be a servant and instrument, not a master. His monkey mind should not control and drive him 24/7 (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).
Meaning of Life: This is a very big question, what is the purpose and meaning of life? This is a big question, so Naval gave 2 answers to it: The first answer is that it is personal. You have to find your own meaning. Whoever gives you the knowledge of any method, be it Buddha or Naval, you will feel non sense. That's why you have to find it yourself, so there is definitely no answer, there is definitely a question. You have to sit there and dig into the question.
When you get the answer with which you are happy, then it will be related to your life. The second answer is that life has no meaning. Life has no purpose. Osho used to say, "It's like writing on water or building a house on sand". Whatever you do, it will end, just like this planet will disappear. Even the group that will colonize Mars will also disappear. No one is going to remember you after a few generations, whether you are an artist, a poet or whatever. It doesn't make any sense (The Almanac of Naval Ravikant).