In the fifth review, I am going to review The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. I had seen this book floated around alot, and really wanted to get to reading it after seeing lots of Naval’s tweets floating around on Twitter. His twitter handle is @naval, and you can find him on medium here: Naval Ravikant. Overall, I thought this book was incredibly readable. It is structured in the formats of interviews and tweetstorms, but it really presents the reader with digestible information that they can apply pretty easily. As always — The Basics, The 8-Point Scale, and Big Takeaways will be presented along with some photos of interesting pages. Naval seems like a wise dude.
Link to order on Amazon here.
The Basics
Number of pages: 203 (FYI my answer differs from Amazon because I only count readable pages — AKA the body of the book)
Average time spent reading per page: 45 seconds
Implied amount of time to read the whole book: 2.5 hours
Chapters: N/A (There are 2 parts — Creating Wealth and Building Happiness)
Genre: Philosophy, Business
Audience: Anyone (especially those looking to get rich and be happy— so basically everyone)
Very Short Summary
This book is a second hand retelling and synthesis of Naval Ravikant’s tweets and interviews, offering advice to people looking to get richer and get happier. Many diagrams are included throughout the book and there are no super long chunks of text. There is a discussion throughout the text about the tensions between desire and happiness, as happiness is in essence the lack of desire but this creates a contradiction as obviously wealth is a desire. The book’s example antidote is to only focus on one desire at a time so as not to get overwhelmed and so as to stay focused. The book also places a particular emphasis on the ability of a person to disconnect time and earnings through coding and media — two things that are able to earn for you while you sleep. This book is exactly what it claims to be — a guide to wealth and happiness through the eyes of someone who has achieved both.
The 8-Point Scale
- Readability (10/10)
Easily readable. Many tweetstorms that catch the reader’s eye to capture the essence of the message.
2. Transparency (10/10)
Messages are almost too simplistic. The book makes the concept of wealth almost seem too easy.
3. Applicability (10/10)
Easily applicable. Everything said in the book is in the form of it’s applicability.
4. Excitement (6/10)
Could be a more exciting read. Reading this book was definitely interesting and for sure helpful, there just is not much in the way of “fun” per se.
5. Importance (10/10)
One of the most important books I have ever read, by design. The topics dealt with in this book are important to everyone. In my Introduction to my Book Review Series, I classify this category as how easily it could be used as a personal bible. This book could very, very easily be someone’s personal bible.
6. Accomplishment (8/10)
If this book affects you the way it affected me, you should feel accomplished after reading it. Getting through it is not necessarily that challenging, but grappling with how you can apply some of the concepts can be quite difficult.
7. Integration (9/10)
Your everyday life should change in some way after reading this book.
8. Idea-Changing (10/10)
Changed the way I think about work, changed the way I think about happiness.
OVERALL RATING: 7.3/8.0
Big Takeaways
- Happiness is the lack of desire. The more you want, the less happy you are likely to be.
- Think for yourself. You will create more value than you think by questioning everything and not necessarily doing the hot thing.
- Learn to code and create a personal brand through media. These are two things that can earn for you while you sleep.
- Read. Start with what you are already passionate about — this book is also not a bad start.
- Hard choices lead to an easy life. Seems counterintuitive, but take working out for example.
- Meditate and Workout. These two things will lead to enhanced mental and physical health.
- Don’t get caught up in status games. The cycle of this game never ends, and spending money is the exact opposite of having money, in the most literal sense. Invest as opposed to spend if you want to build wealth.
- If you can’t decide, the answer is no. The big decisions in life should require no indecision.
- Try to focus as best as you can on a single task towards some specified goal. 99% of most people’s mental energy goes towards something that ends up being irrelevant in the long run.
Big Questions
New section. Just a couple things to ponder for yourself if you do not end up reading the book for yourself. Might add this in other reviews, might not. This book leads well into these questions.
- What are you passionate about that you think is unique? Is there some skill you could monetize related to this passion?
- How would you feel if everything in your life went exactly the way you wanted it to?
Summary
I have talked a lot about this book, and provided some good pictures of pages to help you get a taste. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to create wealth for themselves or make themselves happier. Especially to people who are not yet entirely sure about their career path, this book should give good insight on how to detach your earnings from your time, which is essential. One of my favorite books.
Thanks for reading, if you liked this review, I will be churning these reviews out fast and furious and hope to write about more topics soon, so follow me and applaud this!
