The Almanack of Naval Ravikant compiles many of Naval Ravikant’s insights on how to build wealth, happiness, and a good life by focusing on the few essential mindsets, skills, and habits that make the biggest difference.
Notes
About the Author:
Naval Ravikant is a popular figure in Silicon Valley and startup culture of the early 2000s.
He founded several successful companies and invested in some more.
I find this passage interesting from a social skills and status point of view:
He can be as blunt as a foot to the face, but that’s part of what I love and respect about him: you never have to guess what Naval is thinking.
I’ve never had to guess how he’s feeling about me, someone else, or a situation. This is a huge relief in a world of double-talk and ambiguity.
I think it says a lot about the benefits of what we call here “straight talk”, part of our honorable man’s approach.
Learn more:
To Get Rich, Add Value
You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.
And:
Money is how we transfer wealth. Money is social credits.
(…)
If I do my job right, if I create value for society, society says, “Oh, thank you. We owe you something in the future for the work you did in the past. Here’s a little IOU. Let’s call that money.”
True, this also aligns with our social exchange-centric approach.
Scientists Add The Most Value
I view scientists as being at the top of the production chain for humanity. The group of scientists who have made real breakthroughs and contributions probably added more to human society, I think, than any single other class of human beings.
I see it the same way.
Though here Naval’s take of “value creation = money” breaks down because most scientists aren’t super wealthy.
So, in truth, value creation is part of money-making, but not sufficient in itself.
Good strategies and the power principles we teach here are also part of that equation :).
Play for The Long Run
Whether in business or relationships, the best comes from long-term exchanges.
Just like we do on The Power Moves, Naval uses the game theory expression of “iterated games”:
Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.
Of course, this is not true anymore for short-term exchanges, where manipulation or coercion can provide comparative advantages.
But in general, for marrying win-win personal success and life quality, he’s right. Also see our foundational articles:
- Smart cooperation framework: give, but ensure you’re getting back
- Principles of social success
Good Thinkers Know The Foundations
The really smart thinkers are clear thinkers. They understand the basics at a very, very fundamental level.
Agree.
I would add that even beyond the fundamentals, clear thinkers are systemic thinkers.
They can put things in perspective because they understand how the whole structure-theory fits together.
Speaking of our foundations, see here for foundations-first self-development:
Let Others Come to You Creating Value (Don’t Waste Time Networking)
I think business networking is a complete waste of time (…) if you’re building something interesting, you will always have more people who will want to know you.
Trying to build business relationships well in advance of doing business is a complete waste of time. I have a much more comfortable philosophy: “Be a maker who makes something interesting people want. Show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you.”
I lived my professional life with TPM this exact same way.
Though of course this cannot be generalized to everyone.
See Ali’s take here:
Principles-Thinking & Mental Models
The importance of critical thinking is another area we strongly agree on:
A lousy way to do memory prediction is “X happened in the past, therefore X will happen in the future.” It’s too based on specific circumstances. What you want is principles. You want mental models.
This is where Ravikant found the best mental models:
The best mental models I have found came through evolution, game theory, and Charlie Munger. Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett’s partner. Very good investor. He has tons and tons of great mental models.
Author and trader Nassim Taleb has great mental models. Benjamin Franklin had great mental models. I basically load my head full of mental models. [4]
Once again we agree on evolution and game theory, two central pillars for this website’s own frameworks.
However, I find the names confusing.
Why “mental models” and not “critical thinking”?
Mental models result from good thinking, not the other way around.
Also, I wished for more specific advice.
Avoid Mainstream Books
Another point we agree on.
I largely stopped reading mainstream books. See here why:
Says Naval:
There’s a lot of these, what I would call pseudoscience bestsellers…People are like, “Oh, did you read this book?” I always say yes, but the reality is I read maybe two chapters of it.
P.S.:
That doesn’t sound like the guy who always talks straight :).
Tendency to Chase “Fads”
I sense a tendency to adopt and believe several (formerly) popular fads, including from popular “bio-hacking” gurus. Paleo diet, intermittent fasting, and similar had no place in the almanac, in my opinion.
The more potentially dangerous one was in going barefoot, something that can be especially risky when running:
We’re not meant to walk in shoes. A lot of back and foot problems come from shoes.
(…)
We’re meant to have some cold exposure. It kickstarts your immune system.
(…)
Meditation is intermittent fasting for the mind.
I call BS on that.
All this “meant to be” smells to me like a simplistic naturalistic fallacy –Miller and Kanazawa say it’s common in more casual evolutionary psychology practitioners-.
You weren’t meant to read books and share your mental elucubrations on Twitter either, for that matter.
Wanna go back to dwelling in a cave, no books and Internet? See how you’ll enjoy that :).
Sometimes Confuses Social And Power Constructs
For example:
Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.
This is only a very specific type of status game. It’s left-wing social climbing / virtue signaling.
Otherwise, status games are everywhere there are people.
And more confusing takes on status:
The problem is, to win at a status game, you have to put somebody else down. That’s why you should avoid status games in your life—they make you into an angry, combative person. You’re always fighting to put other people down, to put yourself and the people you like up.
No, that’s value-taking social-climbing.
And putting others down is called “one-upping”.
You CAN gain status without putting anyone else down. And you can signal value without one-upping.
That’s all we teach here :).
Personality Psychology & Reading People Was Off
Naval correctly stresses how important it is to have great people in your life.
He talks about values, having values, and only accepting people with high integrity in your life.
We fully agree.
And he also talks about how to spot red flags of character.
In the same book, Naval mentions and compliments Scott Adams.
Then later, when recommending Skin In The Game by Nassim Taleb, he says that Taleb ‘has a bit of an attitude, but he has that because he’s brilliant, and it’s okay’.
No, a bad attitude doesn’t flow from brilliance. They’re two wholly independent factors.
One can be brilliant and kind. Or brilliant and an ahole.
Some Naive Takes. No, High-Integrity Isn’t Necessary to Succeed
Look at some of the top roles in society (…) It’s because people trust them. They are trusted because the relationships they’ve built and the work they’ve done has compounded. They’ve (…) shown themselves (in a visible and accountable way) to be high-integrity people.
I wish that was true, but it’s only one side of the coin.
Look at some of the top roles in society, and you will see a lot of dark triads.
And a lot of people who better played the game of power, without necessarily being high-integrity.
Also see:
REVIEW
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a good book with many strong insights, mixed with some less impressive takes and pop self-optimization fads.
But the good outweighs the bad and we see much overlap between Ravikant and The Power Moves.
Naval also leverages several principles from game theory and social exchanges just like we do here.
He talks about “social credits” and “social debits”… And we have never spoken before.
Overall, Naval also seems like a great character and role model.
So thumbs up from TPM.
Applying Game Theory & Evolution to Personal Success
If you’re interested in how to apply scientific principles from evolution, game theory, and social exchange, that’s exactly what we did with our training program.
It helps honorable men who want to create value achieve goals and win:
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: What's Right (& Wrong)
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant compiles many of Naval Ravikant's insights on how to build wealth, happiness, and a good life by focusing on the few essential mindsets, skills, and habits that make the biggest difference.
URL: https://thepowermoves.com/the-almanack-of-naval-ravikant-book-summary-review/
Author: Lucio Buffalmano
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