[bonus] Best Book of 2023 - Part I
The Almanack
No, it’s not Friday but I’m here with great content for you.
Early in 2022, a good friend of mine pitched me “a must-read book for smart people” - The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - and he was spot on. The Almanack was my #1 book of 2022 and it’s one of the books that I will keep coming back to over the years.
So I decided to bring my favorite quotes from the book in a two-part post.
Who is Naval? Entrepreneur and Investor. Naval is the founder of Angellist, Epinions, and Vast.com He is an Angel investor in Twitter, Uber, Yammer, and 100+ more.
You can follow him on Twitter here.
Quotes:
“Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.”
“Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you do both, you will be unstoppable”
“Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now”
“Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others”
“Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media).”
“Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.”
“Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until is true.”
“Technology democratizes consumption but consolidates production. The best person in the world at anything gets to do it for everyone.”
“When I talk about specific knowledge, I mean 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 know.”
“The specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion.”
“Very often, specific knowledge is at the edge of knowledge. It’s also stuff that’s only now being figured out or is really hard to figure out. If you are not 100 percent into it, somebody else who is 100 percent into it will outperform you. And they won’t just outperform you by a little bit - they will outperform you by a lot because now we are operating the domain of ideas, compound interest really applies and leverage really applies.”
This last one reminds me of the GOAT, Michael Phelps's training ethics.
“The internet enables any niche interest, as long as you are the best person at it to scale out. And the great news is because every human is different, everyone is the best at something - being themselves.”
“Escape competition through authenticity”. Basically, when you are competing with people, it’s because you are copying them.”
“The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner. You have to know how to learn anything you want to learn. The old model of making money is going to school for four years, getting your degree, and working as a professional for thirty years. But things change fast now. Now, you have to come up to speed on a new profession within nine months, and it’s obsolete four years later. But within those three productive years, you can get very wealthy.”
“Basic arithmetic and numeracy are way more important in life than doing calculus. Similarly, being able to convey yourself simply using ordinary English words is far more important than being able to write poetry, having an extensive vocabulary, or speaking seven different foreign languages.”
“You can only achieve mastery in one or two things. It’s usually things you are obsessed about.”
“Everybody who really makes money at some point owns a piece of a product, a business, or some IP.”
“Knowledge only you know or only a small set of people knows is going to come out of your passions and your hobbies, oddly enough. If you have hobbies around your intellectual curiosity, you are more likely to develop passions.”
“Follow your intellectual curiosity more than whatever is “hot” right now.”
“You want to know how to do something other people don’t know how to do at the time period when those skills are in demand.”
“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. All you need is a computer - you don’t need anyone’s permission.”
To be continued……..
You can download the book for FREE HERE!!!!
Made with Curiosity in Madrid, Spain