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Title: "Book Review: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant"
date: 2024-03-09
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I had never heard of Naval Ravikant until the book popped up in the search results for personal finance books on Amazon. Or wealth, I don't really remember what that search term was!
In reality, this book is not about personal finance. Instead, it is a collection of thoughts by Naval Ravikant, a venture capitalist, founder or co-founder of several successful websites including the consumer reviews website Epinions.com, Angelist.com, producthunt.com and others. He has been an early investor in over 200 companies, including Uber, Poshmark, wish.com, Twitter, and Stack Overflow.
The book captures Naval's unique view of the world and a plethora of profound perspectives on what is needed to achieve wealth and happiness in today's world. Much of what he promotes, surprisingly, is contrary to what the vast majority of people believe to be true. Most certainly his view is not what one might expect from a venture capitalist.
### What I Liked About the Book
Well, the TL;DR version is "everything!"
The book covers a wide range of topics from building wealth to living a happy life. There's a fair amount of philosophical thought, some Buddhist thinking, and some honest evaluation of religion and the role it plays in one's life.
To me, perhaps the most important takeaway from the book is that following the crowd is the path to mediocrity. If you want to truly become wealthy (which can be defined in various ways) you want to identify what is unique to you and leverage that into a career.
The book is broken into two major sections, Wealth and Happiness.
Some of the tidbits that resonated with me:
* We each have unique interests and talents. Work to identify what those are and figure out how you can leverage them into a career.
* It is vital to understand how wealth is built, how your unique knowledge contributes to that process.
* Working toward long-term rather than short-term outcomes better ensures success and wealth.
* Doing what you love, that which most deeply interests you, ensures that you'll do the best job you can do. This, in turn, ensures that the work you do is eventually recognized and required by others who will pay you well for that work.
* The value of thinking clearly and proper decision-making (and how to do both!)
And there's a lot more that I liked about the book which I won't go into here. Read it for yourself!
### What I Didn't Like About the Book
I can't say anything bad about the book. I was actually surprised at that, as usually I find something with which I disagree in most people's perspectives. That's not to say that you might not find issues, based on your own perspective. He speaks to religion in several places and I suspect not everyone will agree with his perspective. That said, I think it's important that he made those statements not so much to push his view but to challenge the reader to take a step back and look at our beliefs in a different light.
### Do I Recommend this Book
Unabashedly, YES. Again, even if you disagree with some of his views, that's okay. He even points out that blindly taking someone else's perspective as your own is wrong. Just because a particular hack worked for one person doesn't mean it'll work for you. Questioning his perspective is healthy as it helps you to refine your own world view.
In truth, this is a book that I will likely return to again and again just for a fresh infusion of clear thinking.
Note that the book is available through your normal channels but is also available, for free, at https://www.navalmanack.com.