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I have started reading “THE ALMANACK OF NAVAL RAVIKANT” by Eric Jorgenson:
“I take Naval seriously because he:”
“I spent a lot of time reading. My only real friends were books. Books make for great friends, because the best thinkers of the last few thousand years tell you their nuggets of wisdom.”
“Getting rich... is much more about understanding than purely hard work... You should not grind at a lot of hard work until you figure out what you should be working on.”
“You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity-a piece of a business-to gain your financial freedom.”
“Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.”
“Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media).”
“Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less that your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.”
“Technology democratizes consumption but consolidates production. The best person in the world at anything gets to do it for everyone.”
“Science applied us the engine of humanity... Applied Scientists are the most powerful people in the world. This will be more obvious in the coming years.”
“The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner. You have to know how to learn anything you want to learn.”
“What you’re trying to do is find the thing you can go all-in on to earn compound interest... when you find the 1% of your discipline which will not be wasted, which you’ll be able to invest for the rest of your life and has meaning to you-go all-in and forget about the rest.”
“To get rich, you need leverage. Leverage comes in labor, comes in capital, or it can come through code ore media... to get these things, you have to build credibility, and you have to do it under your own name as much as possible, which is risky.”
“Without ownership, when you’re sleeping, you’re not earning. When you’re retired, you’re not earning. When you’re on vacation, you’re not earning. And you can’t earn nonlinearly.”
“If you don’t own equity in a business, your odds of making money are very slim... the real wealth is created by starting your own companies or even by investing. In an investment firm, they’re buying equity. These are the routes to wealth. It doesn’t come through the hours.”
“The most interesting and the most important form of leverage is the idea of products that have no marginal cost of replication. This is the new form of leverage... you can multiply your efforts without involving other humans and without needing money from other humans.”
“A leveraged worker can out-produce a non-leveraged worker by a factor of one thousand or ten thousand. With a leveraged worker, judgement is far more important than how much time they put in or how hard they work.”
“Where you don’t necessarily want to be is a support role, like customer service. In customer service, unfortunately, inputs and outputs relate relatively close to each other, and the hours you put in matter.”
“I would love to be paid purely for my judgment, not for any work. I want a robot, capital, or computer to do the work, but I want to be paid for my judgment... Judgment-especially demonstrated judgment, with high accountability and a clear track record-is critical.”
“I haven’t made money in my life in one giant payout. It has always been a whole bunch of small things piling up... It just stacks up a little bit, a few chips at a time: more options, more businesses, more investments, more things I can do.”
“Value your time at an hourly rate, and ruthlessly spend to save time at that rate. You will never be worth more than you think you’re worth... Always factor your time into every decision.”
“If you can outsource something or not do something for less than your hourly rate, outsource it or don’t do it... Set a very high hourly aspirational rate for yourself and stick to it... Whatever you picked, my advice to you would be to raise it.”
“When you try and do business with somebody, if you have any bad thoughts or any judgments about them, they will feel it... You have to get out of a relative mindset.”
“Be optimistic, be positive. It’s important. Optimists actually do better in the long run.”
“Politics is an example of a status game. Even sports are an example of a status game. To be the winner, there must be a loser. I don’t fundamentally love status game... you should avoid status games in your life-they make you into an angry, combative person.”
“I’m always “working.” It looks like work to others, but it feels like play to me. And that’s how I know no one can compete with me on it.”
