The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

Pick an industry where you can play long-term games with long-term people.

Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.

Society will pay you for creating things it wants. But society doesn’t yet know how to create those things, because if it did, they wouldn’t need you.

It’s much more important today to be able to become an expert in a brand-new field in nine to twelve months than to have studied the “right” thing a long time ago.

If they can train you to do it, then eventually they will train a computer to do it.

Forty hour work weeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes—train and sprint, then rest and reassess.

Earn with your mind, not your time.

Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired.

basics. If you can’t rederive concepts from the basics as you need them, you’re lost. You’re just memorizing.

What you feel tells you nothing about the facts—it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts.

It’s actually really important to have empty space. 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.

It’s only after you’re bored you have the great ideas. It’s never going to be when you’re stressed, or busy, running around or rushed. Make the time.

Read what you love until you love to read.

“As long as I have a book in my hand, I don’t feel like I’m wasting time.” —Charlie Munger