The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

Eric Jorgenson’s compilation of Naval Ravikant on wealth and happiness. The frame: both are skills that can be learned, not luck or temperament you’re born with. The money half is a theory of building wealth without trading time for it.

Mindsets

• Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep — businesses, equity, code, media. Money is how you transfer it; status is a zero-sum game that makes enemies. Aim at the first.
• Productize yourself. Combine specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage into something the market values, then attach it to a scalable vehicle. The goal is to own equity, not rent your hours.
• Play long-term games with long-term people. Compounding applies to trust and reputation, not just capital. Almost all returns in life — wealth, relationships, knowledge — come from compound interest over long horizons.
• Happiness is a skill. Desire is a contract you sign to be unhappy until you get what you want. Wealth without peace is just a more comfortable anxiety; treat contentment as something to train.

First principles

• Specific knowledge. The knowledge that can’t be trained for — found by following genuine curiosity, not school. It resists outsourcing and automation, which is exactly why it’s valuable.
• Leverage. Output multipliers. The old forms — labour and capital — need permission. The new forms — code and media — don’t: products with zero marginal cost of replication that work while you sleep.
• Accountability. Take business risk under your own name. Society rewards those who take responsibility with leverage, equity, and trust — the downside is real, which is what makes the upside real.
• Money buys freedom. The endpoint of wealth is to stop trading time, not to consume more. Freedom from obligation comes before freedom to do anything with it.

Specific knowledge and accountability feed the human axis of the Human vs AI Capability Lens.

Part of the investing & budgeting reading list. Already in the base: The Age Of Nonlinear Returns, A Motorcycle for the Mind, A Return to Code, Nothing Ever Happens Is Over.