The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

by Eric Jorgenson

Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.

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general contractor is obviously a better place to be. But how do we measure it? How do we know it’s better? Well, we know it’s better because this person has some accountability. They’re responsible for the outcome, they have to sweat at night if things aren’t working. Contractors have leverage through laborers working for them. They also have little bit more specific knowledge: how to organize a team, make them show up on time, and how to deal with city regulations. The next level up might be a real estate developer. A developer is someone who’s going to buy a property, hire a bunch of contractors, and transform it into something higher value. They probably have to take out a loan to buy a house or go to investors to raise money. They buy the old house, tear it down, rebuild it, and sell it. Instead of $50,000 like the general contractor, or fifteen dollars an hour like the laborer, the developer might be able to make a million dollars or half a million dollars in profit when they sell the house for more than they bought it for, including the expenses of construction. But now, notice what is required from the developer: a very high level of accountability.

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Some of the most successful people I’ve seen in Silicon Valley had breakouts very early in their careers. They got promoted to VP, director, or CEO, or started a company that did well fairly early. If you’re not getting promoted through the ranks, it gets a lot harder to catch up later in life. It’s good to be in a smaller company early because there’s less of an infrastructure to prevent early promotion. [76]

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Your real résumé is just a catalog of all your suffering. If I ask you to describe your real life to yourself, and you look back from your deathbed at the interesting things you’ve done, it’s all going to be around the sacrifices you made, the hard things you did. However, anything you’re given doesn’t matter. You have your four limbs, your brain, your head, your skin—that’s all for granted. You have to do hard things anyway to create your own meaning in life. Making money is a fine thing to choose.

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means of learning are abundant—it’s the desire to learn that is scarce. [3]

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You are basically a bunch of DNA that reacted to environmental effects when you were younger. You recorded the good and bad experiences, and you use

Notes

Related to the skill of reading are the skills of mathematics and persuasion. Both skills help you to navigate through the real world. Having the skill of persuasion is important because if you can influence your fellow human beings, you can get a lot done. I think persuasion is an actual skill. So you can learn it, and it’s

Transform the World by David Deutsch Not the easiest read, but it made me smarter. [79] Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari A history of the human species. The observations, frameworks, and mental models will have you looking at history and your fellow humans differently. [1] Sapiens is the best book of the last decade I have read. He had decades to write Sapiens. There are lots of great ideas in there and it’s just full of them, chock-full per page. [1] The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley The most brilliant and enlightening book I’ve read in years. He has writt en four of my top twenty books. [11] Everything else writt en by Matt Ridley. Matt is a scientist, optimist, and forward thinker. One of my favorite authors. I’ve read everything of his, and reread everything of his. [4] → Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters → The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature → The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation → The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb The best book I read in 2018, I highly recommend it. Lots of great ideas in there. Lots of good mental models and constructs. He has a bit of an att itude, but he has that because he’s brilliant, and it’s okay. So just look past the att itude and read the book, learn the concepts. It’s one of the best business books I’ve ever read. And luckily, it doesn’t masquerade as a business book. ...

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