The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Click here to buy the book.🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval’s ideas, reprinted from his Twitter threads, interviews, and other writings.
The overarching message of the book is that getting rich is not just about luck, and happiness is not just a trait we are born with—they are skills we can learn.
The goal of this book is to teach us how to forge our own unique paths toward a happier, wealthier, and healthier life.
🧠 Key Takeaways
When you work and create value, society rewards you with these credits, which we call money. This is essentially an IOU—a promise that you can use to claim someone else’s time or resources in the future. But wealth is a whole different game. It’s the assets that keep working for you, even when you’re not actively working yourself.
The best jobs aren’t the ones you land just because you have a degree or someone handed them to you. Instead, they’re the result of continuous learning and growth, combined with the freedom to express that evolution creatively in the marketplace.
Instead of chasing whatever seems profitable at the moment, you’re better off building a career around what truly interests you. When you follow your curiosity, you’re more likely to stay motivated, keep learning, and ultimately create something that’s both valuable and sustainable.
Sometimes the best use of our time isn’t in doing more, but in thinking more. It’s those deliberate, well thought out decisions that truly set you up for lasting success.
Retirement isn’t just about clocking out for the last time at sixty-five and just hanging out, finding ways to pass time in your remaining years. Instead, retirement is about living life on your terms, where work is a choice, not a necessity.
The problem with constantly upgrading your lifestyle is that it keeps you in a cycle where money continues to control you. The more stuff you have, the more you have to maintain—and that costs money.
✍️ Memorable Quotes
“Money is how we transfer wealth. Money is social credits. It is the ability to have credits and debits of other people’s time. If I do my job right, if I create value for society, society says, “Oh, thank you. We owe you something in the future for the work you did in the past. Here’s a little IOU. Let’s call that money.” Wealth is the thing you want. Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep. Wealth is the factory, the robots, cranking out things. Wealth is the computer program that’s running at night, serving other customers. Wealth is even the money in the bank that is being reinvested into other assets, and into other businesses.”
Money, in essence, is just a medium—it’s how we keep score and transfer value. It’s basically a social credit system.
When you work and create value, society rewards you with these credits, which we call money. This is essentially an IOU—a promise that you can use to claim someone else’s time or resources in the future.
But wealth is a whole different game. It’s the assets that keep working for you, even when you’re not actively working yourself.
Having wealth is like having a factory that keeps churning out money 24/7. You’re building wealth when the money in your account is being reinvested to grow even more.
At the end of the day, wealth is what you really want to accumulate. Actively pursuing it is what secures your financial future, not just stacking money in your checking account.
“The best jobs are neither decreed nor degreed. They are creative expressions of continuous learners in free markets.”
The best jobs aren’t the ones you land just because you have a degree or someone handed them to you. Instead, they’re the result of continuous learning and growth, combined with the freedom to express that evolution creatively in the marketplace.
These jobs let you innovate, solve problems, and add real value. It’s not about checking boxes or following a set path—it’s about forging your own path by following your curiosity and sharing your learnings.
That’s why I’m such a big advocate for starting a YouTube channel, blog, newsletter, or any other social media outlet. These kinds of projects perfectly fit this description, and in today’s world, you can actually build a career out of them.
At least, that’s been my experience. The things I talk about or write about in my videos and newsletters come from my own independent learning, driven by my curiosity. I don’t force it; I just follow where my interests lead me.
And the beautiful thing about it is that it’s an infinite game. There’s always something new to learn and uncover as an investor, so the journey is a constant learning experience. With my channel, my newsletter, and these book notes, I’m just documenting the progress and telling my story as it happens. And anyone can do this in their own unique way.
“We live in an age of infinite leverage, and the economic rewards for genuine intellectual curiosity have never been higher. Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now.”
We’re living in a time where leverage is practically limitless. If you’re genuinely curious and always learning, the opportunities to turn that curiosity into a career are huge.
With that said, instead of chasing whatever seems profitable at the moment, you’re better off building a career around what truly interests you. When you follow your curiosity, you’re more likely to stay motivated, keep learning, and ultimately create something that’s both valuable and sustainable.
That’s a way stronger foundation for long-term success (and happiness and fulfillment) than just chasing the next big thing.
“We waste our time with short-term thinking and busywork. Warren Buffett spends a year deciding and a day acting. The act lasts decades.”
We convince ourselves that being busy is the same as being productive. It's easy to get lost in busywork that feels urgent but doesn’t really move the needle in the long run.
If we zoom out, we’ll come to find that real progress comes from thoughtful, deliberate decisions that drive long-term results.
Warren Buffett’s approach is a masterclass in this. Few people have displayed as much patience and deliberation over the years as the Oracle himself.
Warren will spend an entire year carefully analyzing, weighing options, and understanding the full picture before making a move. When he finally pulls the trigger on something, it’s with the confidence that his decision will create value for decades to come. The act itself might be quick, but the impact is enduring.
It’s a powerful reminder that sometimes the best use of our time isn’t in doing more, but in thinking more. It’s those deliberate, well-thought-out decisions that truly set you up for lasting success.
“Humans evolved as hunters and gatherers where we all worked for ourselves. It’s only at the beginning of agriculture we became more hierarchical. The Industrial Revolution and factories made us extremely hierarchical because one individual couldn’t necessarily own or build a factory, but now, thanks to the internet, we’re going back to an age where more and more people can work for themselves.”
The infinite leverage and opportunities offered by the Internet are pushing us back toward a world where more people can work for themselves. The author even imagines a future where, with 8 billion people on the planet, there could be 8 billion unique businesses.
In other words, the internet gives each of us the chance to become self-sufficient and create a career from scratch.
“What you really want is freedom. You want freedom from your money problems, right? I think that’s okay. Once you can solve your money problems, either by lowering your lifestyle or by making enough money, you want to retire. Not retirement at sixty-five years old, sitting in a nursing home collecting a check retirement—it’s a different definition.”
Money is undeniably important, and obviously, none of us would turn down a bit more of it. But what most of us are really after is freedom. That’s the real goal, whether we realize it or not.
At the end of the day, the path to freedom starts with money. To achieve true freedom, you first have to free yourself from financial worries. That’s how you reclaim your time, your energy, and ultimately, your life.
This is what retirement should be about, and we should stop thinking about retirement in the traditional sense.
Retirement isn’t just about clocking out for the last time at sixty-five and just hanging out, finding ways to pass time in your remaining years. Instead, retirement is about living life on your terms, where work is a choice, not a necessity.
It’s about having the freedom to decide how you spend your days—whether that means continuing to work because you love it, diving into a passion project, or simply enjoying the peace that comes with not having to worry about everyday stresses.
This version of retirement isn’t tied to an age or a specific point in life; it’s a mindset. And it’s not about stepping back from life, but finally stepping into it.
“You make money to solve your money and material problems. I think the best way to stay away from this constant love of money is to not upgrade your lifestyle as you make money. It’s very easy to keep upgrading your lifestyle as you make money. But if you can hold your lifestyle fixed and hopefully make your money in giant lump sums as opposed to a trickle at a time, you won’t have time to upgrade your lifestyle. You may get so far ahead you actually become financially free.”
As you make more money, the temptation to upgrade your lifestyle becomes almost automatic. You get a raise, and suddenly a nicer car, a new watch (in my case), or a vacation seems justified.
The problem with constantly upgrading your lifestyle is that it keeps you in a cycle where money continues to control you. The more stuff you have, the more you have to maintain—and that costs money.
You’re always chasing that next financial milestone, which is admirable, but if your expenses rise at the same rate, you’ll just be in the same financial situation as before.
What you want to try and do is to keep your lifestyle steady, even as your income grows. By resisting the urge to spend more as you earn more, you create an increasing gap between your income and your expenses.
Deploying discipline here could eventually put you so far ahead that you reach financial freedom. At this point, money is no longer the driving force behind your decisions, and you have the freedom to live on your terms.
Having this discipline is easy if you can find a way to shift the focus from constantly acquiring more to being content with enough. This is where true freedom lies.
One thing that really helps me with this is having affordable hobbies. Outside of investing, I spend a lot of time reading and exercising, neither of which cost a lot of money (if any).
If you can fill your time with things like that, it becomes pretty easy to avoid the want for material possessions, and it becomes easy to avoid the lifestyle inflation that infects so many.