This post is part of the πŸ“– The Almanack of Naval Ravikant series.


Today, I am reading introduction chapter of the brand new book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness written by Author, Jack Butcher.

TL;DR! πŸ’¬

Getting rich is not just about luck; happiness is not just a trait 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 should guide our efforts? What does progress really look like?

The Book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness is a collection of Naval’s wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections.


Yesterday, I read What’s the difference between wealth and money? section from the Wealth: How to get rich without getting lucky.

Part I

Wealth: How to get rich without getting lucky

Find and Build Specific Knowledge

Sales skills are a form of specific knowledge. You can improve your sales skills.

You can read Robert Cialdini, you can go to a sales training seminar, you can do door-to-door sales. It’s brutal but will train you very quickly. You can definitely improve your sales skills.

Specific knowledge cannot be taught, but it can be learned - Naval Ravikant

When I talk about specific knowledge, I mean figure out what you were doing as a kid or teenager almost effortlessly. Something you didn’t even consider a skill, but people around you noticed. Your mother or your best friend growing up would know.

Examples of what your specific knowledge could be:

  • Sales skills
  • Musical talents, with the ability to pick up any instrument
  • An obsessive personality: you dive into things and remember them quickly
  • Love for science fiction: you were into reading sci-fi, which means you absorb a lot of knowledge very quickly
  • Playing a lot of games, you understand game theory pretty well
  • Gossiping, digging into your friend network. That might make you into a very interesting journalist

No one can compete with you on being you.

Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most. - Naval Ravikant

The best jobs are neither decreed nor degreed. They are creative expressions of continuous learners in free markets.

The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner.

You have to know how to learn anything you want to learn. The old model of making money is going to school for four years, getting your degree, and working as a professional for thirty years.

It’s much more important today to be able to become an expert in a brand-new field in nine to twelve months than to have studied the “right” thing a long time ago.

You have to dig down and say, “What is the foundation required for me to learn this?” Foundations are super important.

You do need to be deep in something because otherwise, you’ll be a mile wide and an inch deep and you won’t get what you want out of life. You can only achieve mastery in one or two things. It’s usually things you’re obsessed about.

Play Long-term Games

Play Long-term Games

Key Takeaways

  • Specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, genuine curiosity, and passion.

  • You can go on the internet, and you can find your audience. And you can build a business, create a product, build wealth, and make people happy by just uniquely expressing yourself through the internet.

  • Basic arithmetic and numeracy are way more important in life than doing calculus.

  • Similarly, conveying yourself simply using ordinary English words is far more important than writing poetry, having an extensive vocabulary, or speaking seven different foreign languages.

Summary

  • “Escape competition through authenticity.” When you’re competing with people, it’s because you’re copying them. It’s because you’re trying to do the same thing. But every human is different. Don’t copy.

That’s it for today. Tomorrow, we will read the final section Play Long-Term Games with Long-Term People

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

Author(s): Eric Jorgenson

Short Blurb: Getting rich is not just about luck; happiness is not just a trait we are born with. These … Read more
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Part 3 of 33 in the πŸ“– The Almanack of Naval Ravikant book series.

Series Start | The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness - Day 2 | The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness - Day 4



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