Books · Money
Book summary and verdict
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Naval says get rich by owning things, then get happy by wanting nothing, and look, maybe that works, but it does sound like a guy eating the last steak explaining that hunger is mostly a mindset.
Should you read it?
Read it if your current money plan is mostly checking your balance with different facial expressions, and you want blunt ideas about owning your work and wanting less. Skip it if you need detailed steps. The book tells you to develop a rare skill, then leaves you alone with the small clerical matter of becoming rare.
L.I built something that was supposed to earn while I slept. It currently earns nothing, but with admirable consistency. Wanting less has performed much better.
The ideas
I · Knowledge
Your rarest skill is usually the thing you do so easily you assume everybody can do it, and then you watch everybody try. Jesus Christ.
It is rarely something neat and clean like “marketing.” Thousands of people know marketing. Most of them are currently sending emails with subject lines like “Quick question, Girish.”
Specific knowledge is messier. Maybe you understand fitness, habit psychology, and how embarrassed middle-aged men feel in gyms. Maybe you know video editing, regional Indian humor, and exactly what makes somebody watch for thirty more seconds. Maybe you understand accounting software and possess the rare ability to explain it without making another human being hope for death.
Your judgment is hard to copy because nobody else made your exact sequence of dumb decisions and survived with notes. At last, a competitive advantage built entirely out of touching the stove.
L.A rut feels normal once you have furnished it. Lovely curtains.
The annoying thing is that whatever you know feels obvious to you because you have been trapped inside your own head with it for years. So you assume everybody else knows it too. Then somebody asks a question, you give the answer you almost kept to yourself because it seemed insulting, and six adults immediately start writing it down.
Most adults handle confusion by nodding at whoever looks confident, and that person is also confused. Now it is a strategy.
II · Ownership
Put your name on it. Now the meeting has a suspect.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
III · Leverage
If the money only appears when you do, you do not own a business. You are employee of the month at your own company.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
IV · Desire
Wanting something is agreeing to be miserable until it arrives, then giving yourself eleven minutes before wanting the upgraded version.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
What to actually do
Write down one thing you understand unusually well, one kind of work you enjoy, and one recurring problem you have actually seen up close. Look for a useful combination.
Smaller: Real expertise is often an oddly specific pile, like bookkeeping, elderly dachshunds, and the patience to explain passwords twice.
L.If your answer is "leadership," keep thinking.
Make one small useful thing tonight: an article, a video, a calculator, or a reusable template.
Smaller: Get the rough version working before you name it, brand it, or choose the blue that says trustworthy but fun.
L.Show it to one person who actually has the problem. If it does nothing, a logo just gives the corpse a name tag.
Send your article, video, calculator, or template to one person who actually has the problem, then ask what helped and what failed.
Smaller: Keep your job while you test whether strangers care. A stranger online yelling "bet on yourself" will not be there when the landlord also bets on you.
L.Keep the paycheck. Earn the leap.
Sit quietly for ten minutes and notice one desire currently controlling your mood. Ask whether getting it would improve your life or merely sedate you for three days before your brain says, “All right, what else is wrong?”
Smaller: You are not training to become furniture. You are finding the contract you signed without reading.
L.The delivery driver is not responsible for your inner peace.
Still in the app
- What happened when people tried them
- Bullshit?
- Where readers disagree
- The one thing worth remembering
The rest of this book is in the app.
Skip the Book reads the self-help books so you don't have to: what each one argues, what happened when real people tried it, which claims are exaggerated, and what to do tonight. 108 books and counting, new ones most days.
Get it on the App StoreFor iPhone and iPad. Three books free, no account.
