The PDF of Naval Ravikant
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is subtitled "a guide to wealth and happiness." But that's backward.
If you say "wealth and happiness" fast enough, it sounds like people think: "wealth, then happiness." But a cart can't pull a horse. And a horse may wander off course without a driver.
This error prioritizes gratification over sustained momentum: "First, I'll get rich. Then I'll be happy. When I'm rich and happy, I'll have the time and energy to pursue the things I care about."
The editor of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant made the same mistake. He cataloged Ravikant’s philosophy—in which sustainability of motivation is a key factor—but, ironically, he used a sequence that isn’t sustainable.
Once rearranged into their proper order, Ravikant's ideas offer a practical, long-term strategy:
- The driver—what Ravikant calls "specific knowledge"—will lead to a higher chance of;
- The horse—happiness is a default state of a simple life; and the combination can become
- The cart—long-term wealth-building—once you have an intrinsic desire to keep going and enough skill to capitalize on luck.
The Driver: What is "specific knowledge"?
Specific knowledge is an insatiable, intrinsic interest that has persisted throughout your life. It is not a fad. Because it’s intrinsic, it will provide an unending source of motivation.
Devote yourself to pursuits where you have an intrinsic interest to do the work (which can lead to wealth), not where you have a passing interest to be entertained (which is a distraction).
The Horse: Happiness is a default state.
Pursuing specific knowledge is its own reward. The work it demands is fulfilling in its own right. Happiness is put in its rightful place: as a side effect, not an end in itself.
Understand stoicism. Happiness doesn't come from satisfying wants. It comes from not having desires in the first place. Pursuing specific knowledge puts you on a path that is rewarding for its own sake. What comes after—with or without wealth—is merely a bonus.
The Cart: Wealth is a consequence.
Find people that share your principles. Develop key long-term relationships. Find like-minded people that share your values and have a long-term focus. As Jim Collins wrote in Good to Great, "You need to get the right people on the bus."
Build a business. Combine your intrinsic interests, stoic perspective, and life-long friendships into a business.
With luck and skill, your magic combination can become a catalyst for wealth-building. Go all in and compound it over a long timeline. Chance will provide profitable opportunities. Craft (or its lack) will determine if that profit becomes a reality.
The PDF of Naval Ravikant
I liked the content of The Almanack, but I was disappointed with the execution of the project. I condensed and reorganized it into The PDF because I thought Ravikant’s ideas were worth the 40 hours it took to do it. I’ve presented his critical ideas in a more practical context using my driver-horse-cart approach.
I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading.
—Scott Semple
FYI
My Disclaimer
This is a biased, condensed version of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. It should be considered a companion to the original, not a replacement.
Before reading The Almanack, I had never heard of Ravikant. And I haven't read anything of his other than The Almanack. My interpretations could be way off the mark. As a copy of a copy, The PDF does run the risk of being a smudgy approximation of Ravikant himself. You have been warned.
Notation
Throughout the text, superscript numbers represent the Kindle location of the quoted passage inside The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.
Commentary
In the appendix, you can read:
- More on this project in Why the PDF?
- A big error in the philosophy in What Ravikant Got Wrong; and
- A filter to find an intrinsic interest using A Formula for Freedom
THE DRIVER: What is specific knowledge?
Specific knowledge is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now. 457 The winners of any game are the people who are so addicted they continue playing even as the marginal utility from winning declines. 757
Specific knowledge is an insatiable, intrinsic interest.
Specific knowledge is sort of this weird combination of unique traits from your DNA, your unique upbringing, and your response to it. It’s almost baked into your personality and your identity. Then you can hone it. 317
You do need to be deep in something because otherwise you’ll be a mile wide and an inch deep and you won’t get what you want out of life. You can only achieve mastery in one or two things. It’s usually things you’re obsessed about. 370
The great news is because every human is different, everyone is the best at something—being themselves. 350 You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale. 220
Genuine curiosity feels like play.
Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion.234 [It] will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.235
Figure out what you were doing as a kid or teenager almost effortlessly. Something you didn’t even consider a skill, but people around you noticed. Your mother or your best friend growing up would [might] know.310
To make an original contribution, you have to be irrationally obsessed with something. 1528 [You'll recognize your] obsessive [pursuit when] you [can] dive into things and remember them quickly. 314
Know what it's not.
If it entertains you now but will bore you someday, it’s a distraction. 461
Find where that curiosity is needed.
Your goal in life is to find the people, business, project, or art that needs you the most. 1525
Once found, go all-in.
You should be very thoughtful and realize in most things (relationships, work, even in learning) what you’re trying to do is find the thing you can go all-in on. 402
When you find the 1 percent of your discipline which will not be wasted, which you’ll be able to invest in for the rest of your life and has meaning to you—go all-in and forget about the rest. 407
THE HORSE: Happiness is a default state.
Learning Happiness
Happiness is there when you remove the sense of something missing in your life. 1201 When nothing is missing, your mind shuts down and stops running into the past or future to regret something or to plan something. 1203
Every desire is a chosen unhappiness.
Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. 1305
It’s way more important to perfect your desires than to try to do something you don’t 100 percent desire. 1310
Example: Jealousy
If you’re not willing to do a wholesale, 24/7, 100 percent swap with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous. 1380
If you had the opportunity to switch places with Warren Buffett, would you do it? You could be one of the richest people in the world. But you would also have to be 90 years old. ―Anthony Pompliano, Time Billionaire
The trifecta is to have time, money, and health at the same time.
When you’re young, you have time. You have health, but you have no money. When you’re middle-aged, you have money and you have health, but you have no time. When you’re old, you have money and you have time, but you have no health. So the trifecta is trying to get all three at once. 1313
Confucius says you have two lives, and the second one begins when you realize you only have one. 1318
Happiness is built by habits.
You have to go through your life replacing your thoughtless bad habits with good ones, making a commitment to be a happier person. At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people [with] whom you spend the most time with. 1408
Avoid mood disruptors.
Not drinking alcohol will keep your mood more stable. Not eating sugar will keep your mood more stable. 1404 You’re being fed dopamine and having dopamine withdrawn from you in these little uncontrollable ways. Caffeine is another one where you trade long term for the short term. 1406
Minimize obligations.
How much of [your] day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of interest? 1452
Find happiness in acceptance.
In any situation in life, you always have three choices: you can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. 1464 A rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things outside of their control. 1248 What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you could leave it but not leaving it and not accepting it. That struggle or aversion is responsible for most of our misery. 1471
Any moment where you’re not having a great time, when you’re not really happy, you’re not doing anyone any favors. It’s not like your unhappiness makes them better off somehow. All you’re doing is wasting this incredibly small and precious time you have on this Earth. Keeping death [at] the forefront and not denying it is very important. 1501
Saving Yourself
Focus on quality.
Most fit and healthy people focus much more on what they eat than how much. Quality control is easier than (and leads to) quantity control. 1568 If you are willing to make the short-term sacrifice, you’ll have the long-term benefit. 1598
Think in decades.
Anger and emotions are a huge, completely unnecessary consequence [of hard decisions]. Now, I’m trying to learn from that and do the same things I think are the right things to do but without anger and with a very long-term point of view. If you take a very long-term point of view and take the emotion out of it, I wouldn’t consider those things mistakes anymore. 1752
If someone says, “I want to be fit, I want to be healthy. Right now, I’m out of shape and I’m fat.” Well, nothing sustainable is going to work for you in three months. It’s going to be at least a ten-year journey. 1763
People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten. —Bill Gates, The Road Ahead
Choose to grow.
Set up systems, not goals.
―Scott Adams
Choose your environment.
The environment programs the brain, but the clever brain can choose its environment. 1792 Use your judgment to figure out what kinds of environments you can thrive in, and then create an environment around you so you’re statistically likely to succeed. 1790
I’m not going to be the most successful person on the planet, nor do I want to be. I just want to be the most successful version of myself while working the least hard possible. 1793
Cast yourself out.
If you view yourself ... as someone who was cast out by society and has no role in normal society, then you will do your own thing and you’re much more likely to find a winning path. 1821
[But] a contrarian isn’t one who always objects—that’s a conformist of a different sort. A contrarian reasons independently from the ground up and resists pressure to conform. 926
Free yourself.
Be exactly who you are. Holding back means staying in bad relationships and bad jobs for years instead of minutes. 1849
Honor agreements. Dash expectations.
If they have an agreement with you, it’s your problem. But, if they [only] have an expectation of you, that’s completely their problem. It has nothing to do with you. They’re going to have lots of expectations out of life. The sooner you can dash their expectations, the better. 1854
Value your time.
[Time] is all you have. It’s more important than your money. 1859 Do not waste it. 1860 If you’re not spending your time doing what you want, and you’re not earning, and you’re not learning—what the heck are you doing? 1861
Live well below your means.
People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom. 1870 [But that] taste of freedom can make you unemployable. 1873
Philosophy
Deserve what you get.
Karma is just you, repeating your patterns, virtues, and flaws until you finally get what you deserve. 841
I don’t buy the everlasting afterlife answers because it’s insane to me, with absolutely no evidence, to believe because of how you live seventy years here on this planet, you’re going to spend eternity, which is a very long time, in some afterlife. What kind of silly God judges you for eternity based on some small period of time here? 1914
Be honest—and nice about it.
Radical honesty just means I want to be free. Part of being free means I can say what I think and think what I say. They’re highly congruent and integrated. 961
[But] it doesn’t have to be blunt. Charisma is the ability to project confidence and love at the same time. It’s almost always possible to be honest and positive. 973
THE CART: Wealth is a consequence.
Build judgment.
There’s no shortcut to smart. 868
Velocity is more important than speed.
The direction you’re heading in matters more than how fast you move, especially with leverage. 880 Picking the direction you’re heading in for every decision is far, far more important than how much force you apply. Just pick the right direction to start walking in, and start walking. 881
How to Think Clearly
Be (more) rational.
Almost all biases are time-saving heuristics. For important decisions, discard memory and identity, and focus on the problem. 959
Very smart people tend to be weird since they insist on thinking everything through for themselves. 925 Clear thinkers appeal to their own authority. 894
If you can’t rederive concepts from the basics as you need them, you’re lost. You’re just memorizing. 892
If you can be more right and more rational, you’re going to get nonlinear returns in your life. Decision-making is everything. 980
[How do] you make sure you’re dealing with reality when you’re making decisions? By not having a strong sense of self or judgments or mind presence. 895
Feelings are not facts.
The “monkey mind” will always respond with this regurgitated emotional response to what it thinks the world should be. 896
What you feel tells you nothing about the facts—it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts. 917
The moment of suffering—when you’re in pain—is a moment of truth. 902 [We’re] still wishing reality was different. The problem isn’t reality. The problem is [our] desire is colliding with reality and preventing [us] from seeing the truth, no matter how much you [don't like] it. 911
Make time to think.
It’s only after you’re bored you have the great ideas. 922 If you don’t have a day or two every week in your calendar where you’re not always in meetings, and you’re not always busy, then you’re not going to be able to think. 919
Collect mental models.
If you go to the library and there’s a book you cannot understand, you have to dig down and say, “What is the foundation required for me to learn this?” Foundations are super important. 364
A lousy way to [think] is “X happened in the past, therefore X will happen in the future.” It’s too based on specific circumstances. What you want [are] principles. You want mental models. 984
Avoid errors.
Being successful is about not making mistakes. It’s not about having correct judgment. It’s about avoiding incorrect judgments. 1000
Avoid the principal-agent problem.
If you want it done, then go. And if not, then send.
― Julius Caesar
What [Caesar] meant was, if you want it done right, then you have to go yourself and do it. When you are the principal, then you are the owner—you care, and you will do a great job. When you are the agent and you are doing it on somebody else’s behalf, you can do a bad job. You just don’t care. You optimize for yourself rather than for the principal’s assets. 1012
The more closely you can tie someone’s compensation to the exact value they’re creating, the more you turn them into a principal, and the less you turn them into an agent. 1016
Can’t decide? The answer is no.
The reason is, modern society is full of options. 1046 When you choose something, you get locked in for a long time. Starting a business may take ten years. You start a relationship that will be five years or maybe more. You move to a city for ten to twenty years. These are very, very long-lived decisions. It’s very, very important we only say yes when we are pretty certain. You’re never going to be absolutely certain, but you [need] to be very certain. 1049
Suffer in the short-term.
If you’re evenly split on a difficult decision, take the path more painful in the short term. 1055 Most of the gains in life come from suffering in the short term so you can get paid in the long term. 1063
If two [choices] are even and one has short-term pain, that path has long-term gain associated. With the law of compound interest, long-term gain is what you want to go toward. Your brain is overvaluing the side with the short-term happiness and trying to avoid the one with short-term pain. 1059 You have to cancel the tendency out ... by leaning into the pain. 1063
Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.
― Jerzy Gregorek, from alcoholic to 4-time weightlifting world champion
Learn to love to read.
The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner. You have to know how to learn anything you want to learn. 358 If you’re a perpetual learning machine, you will never be out of options for how to make money. 1150
[Most] people don’t read an hour a day. [Most] people, I think, read a minute a day or less. 1097 [Knowledge is] not about “educated” vs. “uneducated.” It’s about “likes to read” and “doesn’t like to read.” 1121
Read what you love until you love to read. 1083 [Then] read the greats in math, science, and philosophy. Ignore your contemporaries and news. Avoid tribal identification. Put truth above social approval. 1124
You must routinely use all the easy-to-learn concepts from the freshman course in every basic subject. ― Charlie Munger
When you’re reading a book and you’re confused, that confusion is similar to the pain you get in the gym when you’re working out. But you’re building mental muscles instead of physical muscles. 1128
Building Wealth
Seek wealth.
If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you. 216 Seek wealth, not money or status.
Understand what wealth is.
Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. 213
(Not so. See "What Ravikant Got Wrong" in the Appendix. -Ed.)
Play long-term games with long-term people.
Play iterated games.
All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest. 225
When you find the right thing to do, when you find the right people to work with, invest deeply. Sticking with it for decades is really how you make the big returns in your relationships and in your money. 390
Your reputation is a compounding asset.
Compound interest also happens in your reputation. If you have a sterling reputation and you keep building it for decades upon decades, people will notice. Your reputation will literally end up being thousands or tens of thousands of times more valuable than somebody else who was very talented but is not keeping the compound interest in reputation going. 379
Cultivate a network.
For someone who is early in their career (and maybe even later), the single most important thing about a company is the alumni network you’re going to build. Think about who you will work with and what those people are going on to do. 770
If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day. 1420
Take on accountability.
Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will
reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage. 410
Optimize for independence rather than pay. If you have independence and you’re accountable [for] your output—as opposed to your input—that’s the dream. 514
If you do something incredible to move the needle on the business, they have to pay you. Especially if they don’t know how you did it because it’s innate to your obsession or your skill or your innate abilities, they’re going to have to keep paying you to do it. 527
Find a position of leverage.
Pursue ownership.
You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. 218 If you don’t own a piece of a business, you don’t have a path towards financial freedom. 434 Without ownership, your inputs are very closely tied to your outputs. 440
Build up operating leverage.
Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media). 243
Code and media are permissionless leverage. They’re the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep. 251
If you can’t code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts. 254
Avoid bad relationships.
The first rule of handling conflict is: Don’t hang around people who constantly engage in conflict. I’m not interested in anything unsustainable or even hard to sustain, including difficult relationships. 1418
Managing other people is incredibly messy. It requires tremendous leadership skills.
You’re one short hop from a mutiny or getting eaten or torn apart by the mob. 486
Manage capital.
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. 492
Make products with no marginal cost.
The final form of leverage is brand new—the most democratic form. It is: “products with no marginal cost of replication.” This includes books, media, movies, and code. Code is probably the most powerful form of permissionless leverage. 494
Now, you can multiply your efforts without involving other humans and without needing money from other humans. 500
Permission is not required.
The most interesting thing about new forms of leverage is they are permissionless]]. They don’t require somebody else’s permission for you to use them or succeed. All you need is a computer. 494
[In contrast,] for labor leverage, somebody has to decide to follow you. For capital leverage, somebody has to give you money to invest or to turn into a product. 508
Get paid for your judgment.
Forty-hour work weeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes—train and [perform], then rest and reassess. 535
The best jobs are neither decreed nor degreed. They are creative expressions of continuous learners in free markets. 357
Earn with your mind, not your time. 555 We can be masters of our own time because we are just being tracked on outputs and not inputs. 602
Judgment—especially demonstrated judgment, with high accountability and a clear track record—is critical. 610 Warren Buffett spends a year deciding and a day acting. That act lasts decades. 611
Those who work much do not work hard.
―Henry David Thoreau
Prioritize and focus.
Pick one big desire in your life at any given time to give yourself purpose and motivation. 1466 You have to say no to everything and free up your time so you can solve the important problems. 683
Figure out what you’re good at, and start helping other people with it. Give it away. Pay it forward. Karma works because people are consistent. On a long enough timescale, you will attract what you project. But don’t measure—your patience will run out if you count. 686
What it means to retire...
... in your head.
Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired. 716
... with your money.
Once you can solve your money problems, either by lowering your lifestyle or by making enough money, you want to retire. 713
One way is to have so much money saved that your passive income (without you lifting a finger) covers your burn rate. 718 A second is you just drive your burn rate down to zero—you become a monk. 719
The best way to stay away from [a] constant love of money is to not upgrade your lifestyle as you make money. If you can hold your lifestyle fixed and make your money in giant lump sums as opposed to a trickle at a time, you won’t have time to upgrade your lifestyle. You may get so far ahead you actually become financially free. 750
How to Get Lucky
Use probability to your advantage.
In 1,000 parallel universes, I want to be wealthy in 999 of them. I don’t want to be wealthy in [just] the fifty of them where I got lucky. 773 I may not nail life in every regard, but I set up systems so I've failed in very few places. 1794
It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent. ―Charlie Munger
Nature speaks in mathematics.
Mathematics is reverse engineering the language of nature, and we have only scratched the surface. The good news is you don’t have to know a lot of math. You just have to know basic statistics, arithmetic, etc. You should know statistics and probability forwards and backwards and inside out. 1838
Without numerical fluency, you are like a one-legged man in an asskicking contest. ―Charlie Munger
Nature follows unbroken mathematical laws and a chain of cause and effect from the Big Bang to now. Everything is perfect exactly the way it is. 1219
Position for luck.
Blind Luck
The first kind of luck is blind luck where one just gets lucky because something completely out of their control happened. 777
Hustle Luck
[Second], there’s luck through persistence, hard work, hustle, and motion. 778
Be a maker who makes something interesting people want. Show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you. 811
Luck Spotting
A third way is you become very good at spotting luck. If you are very skilled in a field, you will notice when a lucky break happens, and other people who aren’t attuned to it won’t notice. 781
Reputation Luck
The last kind of luck is the weirdest, hardest kind, where you build a unique character, a unique brand, a unique mindset, which causes luck to find you. 783 Build your character in a certain way, then your character becomes your destiny. 795
If you are a trusted, reliable, high-integrity, long-term-thinking dealmaker, when other people want to do deals but don’t know how to do them in a trustworthy manner with strangers, they will literally approach you and give you a cut of the deal just because of the integrity and reputation you’ve built up. 798
- via Bruce Flatt in a Brookfield annual letter describing part of the company philosophy.
APPENDIX
Why The PDF?
In late 2020, Eric Jorgenson published The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, a cut-and-paste collection of the "transcripts, tweets, and talks that Naval has shared."
I appreciate Jorgenson's effort, and I'm glad that he put time into such a worthwhile project. The world is better for condensing Ravikant's ideas into one publication. And Jorgenson is doing a great job of continuing to spread them.
But having paid for The Almanack, I was annoyed at the repetition of several ideas and the lack of clarity in certain sections. Jorgenson said the content was "edited for clarity and brevity (multiple times.)" But that was a few times too few.
Problems With The Almanack
Problem #1: Repetition
Concepts, and near-identical passages, appear in multiple locations throughout the book. Here are a few examples:
The superscript numbers are the Kindle locations.
Example: Pursue specific knowledge.
Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. 234
Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now. 457
Example: Capitalize on probability.
In 1,000 parallel universes, you want to be wealthy in 999 of them. 773
I want to live in a way that if my life played out 1,000 times, Naval is successful 999 times. 1794
Example: Acknowledge stoic choices.
In any situation in life, you always have three choices: you can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. 1464
You always have three options: you can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. 1471
Problem #2: Ambiguity
In addition to the repetition, the section titles within the collection often don't reflect their content.
Example: Find work that feels like play.
Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired. One way is to have so much money saved that your passive income (without you lifting a finger) covers your burn rate. 718
"Work that feels like play" and financial independence may be related, but they're not the same thing.
My Solution
I doubt Ravikant would have been repetitive and unclear.
If Ravikant was writing a summary of his own thoughts, I suspect he would avoid reprinting similar passages and being unclear with titles. Why didn't The Almanack treat Ravikant's ideas with the same respect?
With that in mind, I've reduced and reworked The Almanack. I eliminated the repetition by cutting or regrouping necessary passages. And I restructured the book into a driver-horse-cart approach to ensure that first things get first place.
My process:
-
First, I read and highlighted what I thought were the most important concepts. I skipped any that I thought didn't contribute much to the whole. My intent was depth over breadth.
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Second, I regrouped my highlights under the parent concept and/or the title hierarchy in The Almanack. If a title was a poor match for its content, I changed it. For example, the title above—"Find Work That Feels Like Play"—became "What It Means To Retire."
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Third, where warranted, I added sub-sections to each chapter to highlight different aspects of an idea.
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Years later—and inspired by Rob Fitzpatrick's Write Useful Books—I edited and reorganized The PDF one last time, focusing on maximizing reader benefits. I minimized the introduction, put my commentary in the Appendix, trimmed a few sections, and tried to make every idea an imperative, useful sentence.
What Ravikant Got Wrong
For the most part, Ravikant has a great perspective. Most people won't go wrong by adopting many of his ideas—if they employ them in the order that I've laid them out. Specific knowledge is especially important.
However, his definition of wealth is way off the mark:
Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. 213
If I have a side project making $1,000 a year "while I sleep,” and if my expenses are $100,000 per year, am I wealthy? No.
Ravikant is conflating passive income with wealth. They're not the same thing, but if you're in your 20s, it's normal to fantasize about escaping the need for a job. So I understand why his definition is prevalent in the Twitterverse.
wealth is a ratio, not an asset type or particular revenue source. What determines wealth is the relationship between capacity and cost. The greater the gap between the two, the greater your wealth. You could have a depreciating asset (like cash) in such plentiful supply that it'll maintain your wealth even as it declines.
If you have $10 million in cash, the nominal value ($10 million) will remain static as the real value—its purchasing power—declines with inflation. If your expenses are $100,000 per year (a 100:1 ratio against $10 million), you won't outlive your money. You are wealthy because, aside from stupidity and out-of-control gratification, nothing can make you poor, even inflation.
In contrast, if I lived on a salary of $1 million per year and had no savings, I would be despicably poor. I would be poor because I’d be living hand-to-mouth and despicable because it would be voluntary poverty due to big-time gratification problems. And in that situation, I would likely have a delusion about the actual state of my "wealth."
Again, wealth is a ratio. Ratcheting down your expenses has a much more powerful impact on wealth than increasing your rate of return. And the autonomy that comes from true wealth is a side-effect, not a definition of it.
a formula for freedom
Several years ago, I came up with a Venn diagram similar to Ravikant’s criteria for going all-in on an idea. My model has three core components:
- A fascination with the domain;
- The inclination to do the work; and
- A situation that compounds.
If you have only two of the three, move on and keep searching. False hopes come in three types:
-
A Bad Bet: If you have fascination and inclination but no situation, you’ve found a tempting-but-bad bet.
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A Distraction: If you have fascination and situation but no inclination, you’ve found a distraction.
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A Wasted Effort: If you have inclination and situation but no fascination, you’ve found something unsustainable.
But when you find the magic combination of all three, bet big and stick with it. Go all in and let the effort compound over a long timeline.
Anything you’re given doesn’t matter. Your real résumé is just a catalog of all your suffering. You have to do hard things to create your own meaning in life. 844 Making money is a fine thing to choose. Go struggle. 847
Thanks for reading, Scott Semple