The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Eric Jorgenson

In the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, Eric Jorgenson shares the wisdom of Naval Ravikant. This book is quite different from other personal finance books as it does not provide a step-by-step procedure to follow or a proven method.

Instead, this book offers wisdom about living a wealthy yet happy life through the eyes of Naval Ravikant.

Naval Ravikant is an investor, entrepreneur, and philosopher. He is famous for his philosophical ideas around generating wealth and staying wealthy while being happy. He is an advocate of following your passions till you reach your happy, rich life.

However, this type of life is different for everyone. Thus, it is up to us to determine what makes us happy and to go after it.

Here are the main takeaways I learned from reading the book and how they are helping me inch closer to my happy, wealthy life.

1. Seek Wealth, Not Money or Status

The main idea here is to earn money while you sleep. You need to be invested in businesses or companies that are going to generate you passive income.

Your status does not play a role. Whether you are an employee earning $50K a year or a CEO earning $500K a year, you are not considered rich. That is because you can get fired at anytime and your one source of income is gone.

Your income should not depend on your time. Once you detach money from time, this is when you will truly become wealthy. This is because you will be earning money regardless of what you are working on.

To do so, you need to learn how to make money work for you. This can be done through starting your own business, investing in other people’s businesses, investing in the stock market, or in real estate. Really, any asset is sufficient as long as it provides you with passive income.

2. Never Stop Learning

The sad truth is that the majority of people stop learning the moment they graduate. Their knowledge and skill set stop at a certain time frame, yet they continue to wonder why they are not making more money.

To truly become rich, one must never stop learning. This can be done in many different ways. The easiest and most affordable option is to read books. But, you can also attend seminars, take courses, get one-on-one coaching, etc.

The main focus here is that you must keep expanding your knowledge in different fields and keep up with the ever evolving world, or you will find yourself left behind.

Once you have learned a specific topic or skill, it is time to learn to sell it. Most people only know one side of the game. They either have the knowledge but are unable to sell it, or they are excellent at selling but lack the necessary knowledge or skill.

But once you have mastered the ability to learn and sell at the same time, you will be unstoppable.

3. Use Leverage

In order to acquire true wealth, you need to affect people on a large scale. In modern times, this is quite easier than it used to be since we have the internet. You can reach millions of people much more easily than before.

To take advantage of that, take a look at what you can create and can be beneficial to other people. That way, you can sell that to the masses without much effort.

For instance, books, videos, podcasts, and code are great examples of leverage. You put in the time to work once and could later distribute it to many others with less effort required from you.

These types of media or code enable you to earn money while you sleep.

4. Always Choose The Harder Route

If you are constantly choosing the easier choice, you will not experience growth. You have to push yourself out of your comfort zone, and your future self will be rewarded.

Naval’s point of view is that by choosing the more difficult route in the short term, you are forcing yourself to experience pain, which in turn will accelerate your growth.

For instance, if given the choice between staying an employee or starting a business, the majority of people would choose to stay an employee. The reason being is that, in the short term, that choice brings them comfort.

However, the people that choose to start a business do indeed have much more difficulty in the short term because they need to figure out how to run a profitable business and step out of their comfort zone to learn new skills to keep them afloat until the business takes off.

However, for many people, starting that business was the reason they became financially successful, owing to the accelerated short-term growth they experienced.

5. Ditch Your Desires

Naval is prominent for his views on happiness. His philosophical view on happiness is that in order for one to achieve true happiness, one must not have any desires.

Because we tend to obsess over things we can't have, the absence of desire is essential for happiness.Such obsessions can lead us to always be unhappy since we will always long for things out of our reach.

Achieving happiness is a skill that can be learned. This is why it is within the reach of everyone. One must be content with the present and focus on the things that truly matter.

Conclusion

Eric Jorgenson was able to share many life-changing lessons with us in The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.

Naval’s views and mindset allow us as readers to understand the importance of building wealth while creating a meaningful life.

If you want to learn more about generating wealth, staying wealthy, and achieving happiness, then I suggest you read the full book.