8 Life Lessons from Naval Ravikant (#Almanack of Naval Ravikant)

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vikant (navalmanack.com)</a></li></ul>I have consumed quite a bit of his content and in this article, I’ve tried to share the nuggets of wisdom that resonated most with me. His tips are practical and useful and based on my own experience, can be applied and implemented in your life pretty much starting NOW (if you choose to do so). On that note, let’s get into it.<ol><li>How to find ‘Passion’: If there’s one question that’s the most asked about by today’s generation, its about how you find your passion. Naval breaks it down to simply focusing on things that you are really into. The things that you did as a child for which you required no effort in doing. It just came naturally to you. In life, generally speaking (unless you are Elon Musk), you can only achieve true mastery in one or two things. And your chances of achieving that mastery are usually quite high for things you are obsessed about. Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career, and hence finding your passion, than following whatever is making money right now. If you have hobbies around your intellectual curiosities, you are more likely to develop these passions. A good thumb rule to go by, if it entertains you now but will bore you someday, it’s a distraction. Keep looking.</li><li>The power of compound interest: Compound interest works wonders not only on money but relationships (personal and professional) as well. Invest time (decades) to build your reputation and the people you like to work with. When you are young (and maybe naive), you should try new things, explore working with a lot of people, etc. But as you age and grow wiser, what will help you truly ‘grow’ in life are not the random set of people you’ve met throughout your life journey but rather people who’ve been with you through your highs and more importantly, through your lows and the people in whom you’ve invested time.</li><li>Do things for their own sake: You should do things for their own sake. The meaning of life is to do things for their own sake. By doing things for their own sake, you’ll do them in the best version possible. The less you want something (i.e., an outcome), the less you’ll think about it and hence the more you’ll do it in a natural way. More importantly, the more you’ll do it for yourself. You are going to do it in a way you’re good at, and you’re going to stick to it. And eventually, the power of compound interest will work and more people will notice.</li><li>Money as leverage: Money is good as a form of leverage. Labour not so much. Managing capital gives you great returns but it is tricky to manage. It scales very very well. If you get good at managing capital, you can manage more and more capital, much more easily than you can manage more and more people (as it comes with a bunch of associated egos and challenges).</li><li>Getting rich: You are never going to get rich by renting out your time. Optimize for independence rather than pay. If you have independence and are accountable for your output compared to your input, then you have a dream job. What you want in life is to have control over your time. You want to get into a leveraged job where you control your own time and you are tracked on th

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e outputs. If you do something incredible to move the needle of the business, they have to pay you. Especially if they don’t know how you did it as it comes from your special skill or innate ability. Then you can optimise and do your best work without attending unnecessary meetings etc. as it’s your output that matters i.e. the actual work itself. Earn with your mind, not with your time. Find jobs where you are judged and hence rewarded around your output than inputs.</li><li>Prioritise your time: No one is going to value you more than you value yourself. Set yourself a very high personal hourly rate and then try and optimise your time accordingly and start treating yourself in that way. Based on your hourly rate, then think about areas and so-called irrelevant things/errands that you need to do/run. Is it worth your time and if not, ruthlessly deny. If you can outsource something or not do something for less than your hourly rate, outsource it or don’t do it. If you can hire someone to do it for less than your hourly rate, hire them (that includes cooking). Set a very high aspirational rate for yourself and stick to it. A good thumb rule to go-by, your hourly rate should seem and feel absurdly high.</li><li>Find work that feels like play: Building up on the earlier point around finding your passion, you should aim (as best possible) to find work that feels like play. You shouldn’t wait for your retirement or sacrifice your today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you are retired. You retire by either earning so much that you earn more than you spend or you become a monk or you absolutely love what you do and hence work does not feel like work and money is an outcome.</li><li>Best RoI money can provide: Money used to buy freedom is the best RoI that money can give you. But be aware that if you expand your lifestyle every time you earn more money, then you will be trapped by that money itself in your life. What making money will do is, ‘It’ll solve your money problems’. It won’t make you happy, or calm, or fit or your family more loving, etc. It’ll remove certain sets of things that can come in your way of being happy but it’ll not make you happy per-se. On a final note, “You don’t get rich by spending your time to save money. You get rich by saving your time to make money”.</li></ol>And that’s it. Hope you enjoyed this read and gained some perspective that you can apply in your life. Share in the comments what resonated the most with you (or didn’t). I’m keen to hear. Thanks for reading.If you liked what you read and want to read more, here’s one of my articles in a similar vein on Dr. Peterson (or Uncle Peterson as he’s fondly called by some of his fans— including me :)) — <a href="https://readmedium.com/8-tips-for-self-development-from-dr-jordan-peterson-d31e73d4df04">8 Tips For Self-Development from Dr. Jordan Peterson | by Anant Kasliwal | Medium</a> or another one about money management — <a href="https://readmedium.com/7-tips-for-money-management-from-morgan-housel-psychology-of-money-eac133c4e0d2">7 Tips For Money Management From Morgan Housel — Psychology Of Money | by Anant Kasliwal | Medium</a></article></body>

8 Life Lessons from Naval Ravikant (#Almanack of Naval Ravikant)

One specific form of writing I like is book reviews. Book review in the form of my interpretation of what the author was trying to convey as how I understood it. I read a book, make my own notes and then I share it on Medium.

Why do I do this? 2 major reasons:

To inspire people to develop a reading habit

At the least, if any individual decides to invest 5 mins of their time in reading this article, their life can hopefully get a little better in some shape or form.

With that intention, let’s now talk about this article. This is about Naval Ravikant. As per Wiki, he’s an Indian-American entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder, chairman and former CEO of AngelList. He has invested early-stage in over 200 companies including Uber, FourSquare, Twitter, Wish.com, Poshmark, Postmates, Thumbtack, Notion, SnapLogic, Opendoor, Clubhouse, Stack Overflow, Bolt, OpenDNS, Yammer, and Clearview AI, with over 70 total exits and more than 10 Unicorn companies.

Ravikant is a fellow of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship. As a podcaster, he shares advice on pursuing health, wealth, and happiness.

Just so you can make your own judgment, I’ve shared some of his content below so you can decide for yourself.

I have consumed quite a bit of his content and in this article, I’ve tried to share the nuggets of wisdom that resonated most with me. His tips are practical and useful and based on my own experience, can be applied and implemented in your life pretty much starting NOW (if you choose to do so). On that note, let’s get into it.

How to find ‘Passion’: If there’s one question that’s the most asked about by today’s generation, its about how you find your passion. Naval breaks it down to simply focusing on things that you are really into. The things that you did as a child for which you required no effort in doing. It just came naturally to you. In life, generally speaking (unless you are Elon Musk), you can only achieve true mastery in one or two things. And your chances of achieving that mastery are usually quite high for things you are obsessed about. Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career, and hence finding your passion, than following whatever is making money right now. If you have hobbies around your intellectual curiosities, you are more likely to develop these passions. A good thumb rule to go by, if it entertains you now but will bore you someday, it’s a distraction. Keep looking.

The power of compound interest: Compound interest works wonders not only on money but relationships (personal and professional) as well. Invest time (decades) to build your reputation and the people you like to work with. When you are young (and maybe naive), you should try new things, explore working with a lot of people, etc. But as you age and grow wiser, what will help you truly ‘grow’ in life are not the random set of people you’ve met throughout your life journey but rather people who’ve been with you through your highs and more importantly, through your lows and the people in whom you’ve invested time.

Do things for their own sake: You should do things for their own sake. The meaning of life is to do things for their own sake. By doing things for their own sake, you’ll do them in the best version possible. The less you want something (i.e., an outcome), the less you’ll think about it and hence the more you’ll do it in a natural way. More importantly, the more you’ll do it for yourself. You are going to do it in a way you’re good at, and you’re going to stick to it. And eventually, the power of compound interest will work and more people will notice.

Money as leverage: Money is good as a form of leverage. Labour not so much. Managing capital gives you great returns but it is tricky to manage. It scales very very well. If you get good at managing capital, you can manage more and more capital, much more easily than you can manage more and more people (as it comes with a bunch of associated egos and challenges).

Getting rich: You are never going to get rich by renting out your time. Optimize for independence rather than pay. If you have independence and are accountable for your output compared to your input, then you have a dream job. What you want in life is to have control over your time. You want to get into a leveraged job where you control your own time and you are tracked on the outputs. If you do something incredible to move the needle of the business, they have to pay you. Especially if they don’t know how you did it as it comes from your special skill or innate ability. Then you can optimise and do your best work without attending unnecessary meetings etc. as it’s your output that matters i.e. the actual work itself. Earn with your mind, not with your time. Find jobs where you are judged and hence rewarded around your output than inputs.

Prioritise your time: No one is going to value you more than you value yourself. Set yourself a very high personal hourly rate and then try and optimise your time accordingly and start treating yourself in that way. Based on your hourly rate, then think about areas and so-called irrelevant things/errands that you need to do/run. Is it worth your time and if not, ruthlessly deny. If you can outsource something or not do something for less than your hourly rate, outsource it or don’t do it. If you can hire someone to do it for less than your hourly rate, hire them (that includes cooking). Set a very high aspirational rate for yourself and stick to it. A good thumb rule to go-by, your hourly rate should seem and feel absurdly high.

Find work that feels like play: Building up on the earlier point around finding your passion, you should aim (as best possible) to find work that feels like play. You shouldn’t wait for your retirement or sacrifice your today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you are retired. You retire by either earning so much that you earn more than you spend or you become a monk or you absolutely love what you do and hence work does not feel like work and money is an outcome.

Best RoI money can provide: Money used to buy freedom is the best RoI that money can give you. But be aware that if you expand your lifestyle every time you earn more money, then you will be trapped by that money itself in your life. What making money will do is, ‘It’ll solve your money problems’. It won’t make you happy, or calm, or fit or your family more loving, etc. It’ll remove certain sets of things that can come in your way of being happy but it’ll not make you happy per-se. On a final note, “You don’t get rich by spending your time to save money. You get rich by saving your time to make money”.

And that’s it. Hope you enjoyed this read and gained some perspective that you can apply in your life. Share in the comments what resonated the most with you (or didn’t). I’m keen to hear. Thanks for reading.