[Thoughts] ALMANACK OF NAVAL RAVIKANT

(I actually started writing this article in early 2024. We didn’t even use AI to write articles back then…

It took me almost a year and a half to finally finish it. Not because the content was hard to write, but because 2024 was a tough year for me personally.

I stopped writing for a while. And when I stop writing, I stop thinking clearly. I stop getting smarter. I get dumber. But now, I’m resetting. I’ve started writing again. Even though many things have changed from 2024 to now, I will keep my original draft and choose not to edit it.

More articles coming soon. Stay tuned!)

PREFACE

Almost a year ago, I picked up this book, thanks to a strong recommendation from a mentor I really admire.

To be honest, if I had just come across the book title online, I probably wouldn’t have read it. The Chinese name (納瓦爾的幸福寶典) didn’t sound appealing at all.

But after doing a bit of research on the author, I got curious.

Naval Ravikant is a well-known founder and angel investor. He started AngelList, one of the biggest startup fundraising platforms, and made early investments in companies like Twitter, Uber, Notion, Opendoor, and many others.

When I decided to read the book, the traditional Chinese version wasn’t available yet, so I went with the simplified Chinese version. The translation wasn’t great and didn’t really match my reading style, so I ended up reading both the Chinese and English versions side by side. (here’s a free link to the English version, in case you’re interested)

The book is a collection of Naval’s short essays, interviews, and tweets. What follows are some of my favorite quotes and my personal thoughts on them.

Let’s dive in!

THOUGHTS

So, technology is the set of things, as Alan Kay said, that don’t quite work yet. Once something works, it’s no longer technology.

I couldn’t agree more with this quote. “Technology” is usually something most people haven’t fully figured out yet. Once it works reliably, like the wheel or paper, we stop calling it ”Technology”.

This also reveals something about how technology gets created. If you want to use something new, you have to accept a certain level of risk and uncertainty.

You try it. If it fails, you try again. If it works, you’ve created something valuable. And if you can scale it and bring it to society, that value turns into wealth.

Leverage• Labor: Managing other people is quite messy. When scaled up, things get complicated• Capital: You can manage more capital much more easily than you can manage more people• Code & Media: The most powerful form of permissionless leverage with no marginal cost of replication

I regret learning this concept so late.

If we want to scale ourselves without constantly trading time for output, we need leverage. It is how you make things work for you even when you are not actively involved. Naval explains this clearly.

There is a progression of leverage: from labor, to capital, to code and media.

Labor is the oldest and messiest form. Then came capital, which is easier to scale but still limited by gatekeepers. With the rise of the internet, we now have permissionless leverage through code and media. As long as you have a computer, you can create and distribute at almost zero marginal cost.

The biggest takeaway for me is that, since I cannot code, I need to make better use of media. That is one reason I have been writing more articles like this. (now everyone can vibe-coding…)

And with so many no-code tools available, I can still make my computer work for me. I do not need to build a web scraper from scratch. I can find existing tools that do the job.

Now I am really curious what the next form of leverage will be in the era of AI.

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

This is the first time I’ve heard about this concept. I had never thought about it before.

However, it did resonate with my past experiences.

Sales is an example, building a product is another. Both of these are provided by this book. I’d like to add one more, that making deals is also a great example.

When I worked at a VC firm, our schedule was basically like this, and I think it’s similar to other professional services. (such as investment banking, consulting, etc.)

When we are not working on deals, we train ourselves by meeting a lot of founders/industry experts, learning the latest news, and analyzing market dynamics.

When a deal hits, we sprint into the due diligence process of the deal, conducting in-depth market research and building financial models within the given timeframe.

Then, rest and reassess.

Our evaluations are divided into two categories, one happens earlier, when we review the deal with our partners, and the investment committee, we learn if our analysis makes sense.

The other part happens a few years later, when we can look at the company’s development and see if our assumptions/judgments about the deal were correct.

Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.• Sell: marketing, media, recruiting, fund raising, PR…• Build: design, develop, manufacturing, logistics, procurement

These are things I am still learning more about.

I am actively learning how to sell throughout my career.

Currently, I am mastering the skills of demand generation (marketing), and since I have experience in venture capital, fundraising may not be difficult. However, what I still need is the skills of sales and recruiting.

I will see how I can make up for that in the future…

Building is harder for me (due to my business major background). My idea is to either work with someone who can build or become an owner of the building process, which also relates to the next paragraph.

Be the process owner who make sure the process running smoothly, like CTO in tech company

I learned how products are built during my time at my previous company (shout out to Phase). I was not involved in every part of the process, but it gave me a solid understanding of how different roles: product managers, designers, engineers, QAs — work together to build something complex.

If I get the chance, I want to be the one owning that process. The person who keeps things moving, who makes sure the trains run on time. It sounds challenging, but also incredibly fun.

“All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.”

Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.

I wanted to group these ideas together because I see a strong connection between them. Naval talks about compound interest in different areas of life, and I think the concept applies far beyond just finance.

As someone with a finance background, I understood compound interest in the context of money. What I did not realize was how it also applies to things like relationships, knowledge, accountability, and credibility, too. If you consistently invest in them, time starts working in your favor. You grow exponentially, not just linearly.

Looking back, I think I did well in building long-term relationships early in my career. Working in venture capital helped a lot. I saw firsthand how connections lead to real outcomes.

But one thing I have not done well is putting my name behind my work. I have not embraced enough accountability or risk. Moving forward, I want to take more ownership, attach my name to what I build, and let that compounding process start now. That is one of my next priorities.

Excellent judgment + High sense of accountability + Good track record

= Long-term success.

Since I already touched on accountability above, I want to shift the focus to judgment and track record.

A strong track record is the result of good judgment. If you consistently make smart decisions, time will naturally turn those into visible results.

That is why developing judgment matters more. Judgment sets your direction. And I think most people would agree. If you are running in the wrong direction, it does not matter how fast you go. You are just getting lost faster.

Earn with your mind, not your time.

I had a conversation with a friend about the same topic before.

My point is that because our advantage over others is our brain power, we should utilize it more. It’s like a perpetual motion machine(永動機) that you can use whenever you want. The more you use it, the more you can outperform others. Over time, the gap just keeps growing.

We waste our time with short-term thinking and busywork. Warren Buffett spends a year deciding and a day acting. That act lasts decades.

This may be a bit of an exaggeration. But the idea behind this statement is that we should avoid short-term thinking and busywork, which is something I strongly agree with and stick to for a long time.

As a big fan of “power laws” and a lazy person by nature, I hate the busywork that most people like to do. And I am convinced that it is very dangerous. Spending time on busy work makes you think you’re working hard; in fact, you’re not.

Therefore, it’s worse than doing nothing. If you’re not doing anything, at least you know you’re taking a break. You’ll feel “lazy” and “guilty,” which will make you work harder afterward. (this works for me every time haha)

Like I said above, I’m lazy, and that’s a double-edged sword for me. I use it to avoid wasting time doing pointless things. I know that most things are pointless, and I know that 20% of decisions affect 80% of things.

Because of that, I realized the importance of long-term thinking a long time ago. I spend my time optimizing my daily work (setting up automation for recurring tasks) and researching/thinking about life-changing decisions, like thinking frameworks, career choices, and investment strategies.

Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.

For a real-life example, I don’t hang my own clothes. I use the clothes dryer. (it’s not very common in Taiwan) I spend NT$60 and save around 30 minutes, it is well worth it.

Another example is from my last company. I needed to generate a long list of prospects, and I figured out a way to combine several software tools to get the results. I thought it was better than searching manually.

However, my boss gave me an even better solution: outsourcing.

We found many list-generation experts on Upwork. For a reasonable fee, less than what I would have paid to set up the workflow and use all the software, we got the list in a very short time.

At that moment, I really realized the power of outsourcing and delegating.

And when it comes to delegating, there is a framework you can use as well.

Wealth creation is an evolutionarily recent positive-sum game. Status is an old zero-sum game.

The first time I read about wealth is a positive-sum game from “How to Make Wealth” by Paul Graham. Not only was I shocked after reading that, but I also wrote a short article to illustrate what I learned.

Most people fall into the fallacy of wealth and hate it even more. However, the root of their hatred begins with a false impression of wealth.

I read the same concept in Peter Thiel’s book, that great entrepreneurs get a small portion of the wealth they create from society. They have largely advanced society, innovated existing technologies, and improved the lives of many people.

Obviously, wealth creation is not a zero-sum game.

Status, on the other hand, is a zero-sum game. Anything that requires ranking and status is a zero-sum game. There is only one person at the top of the rankings and there are always many people behind.

Unfortunately, this is the way we are educated in schools, especially in Taiwan, where we are obsessed with ranking everything, from academic performance to classroom neatness.

Everything is ranked. I don’t doubt that a well-designed ranking system can motivate people to perform better. However, it’s just too much and has become out of control…

I hated it very much since I was little. You can read more in my article here, which is a reflection of the education system and I made a comparison between school and the military.

I also observed the “legacy” of status games. After graduating from school, we started comparing salaries crazily. We just want to find something standardized that we can easily rank people on.

We don’t care about fulfillment and passion at work. We cared about salaries and numbers. Because it’s the only way to easily compare many different factors.

It’s very simple, give me a number and I’ll tell you where you rank.

Again, I hate it. Not only because it is a shallow lifestyle, but it’s not beneficial to society.

It’s super toxic and brings people from diversity to singularity. And people will think that there are winners and there are losers, falling into the fixed pie fallacy.

It’s very easy to keep upgrading your lifestyle as you make money. But if you can hold your lifestyle fixed and hopefully 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.

I can relate to this.

After graduating from school, I had a full-time job for the first time that paid a lot more than my internship. (I guess that applies to everyone).

I upgraded my spending budget, bought a PS5, a motorcycle, and increased my budget for each meal. In addition, I increased the frequency of traveling abroad. (traveling has certainly given me many unique experiences, but it’s also expensive…)

All of the above is not a waste of money, but they did cost me a lot. So as I made more and more money, I didn’t get closer to financial freedom; instead, my spending level kept increasing.

What Naval said is probably the best solution to the above situation: “Hold your lifestyle fixed and hope to make a lot of money at once, so you don’t have time to upgrade your lifestyle”.

There are many ways to get a large sum of money at one time, some of which I can think of include: winning a lottery, inheriting property, and, in my opinion, the most viable one, starting a successful business and exiting.

Consciously reflect on your habits, sort out how the habit was developed, and examine whether the habit is still needed at this stage.

This year, I started adding more weekly routines to my calendar. (Yes, I use Google Calendar to manage the tasks that need to get done in my daily life, thanks to the GTD method.)

I started to develop more habits in my life.

I strictly follow the “inbox zero” rule in my work emails.

I started organizing a study group where we pick a book and discuss a few chapters of it each week. We’ve read several books on psychology, business, literature and even philosophy.

I also read with a friend of mine on Tuesday nights (so I could keep up with the weekly progress of our study group). We would have dinner together and then find a cozy cafe to read books. I also set up a weekly sync with one of my friends in the UK to catch up on life updates and discuss startup ideas.

Originally, I was worried that these new habits would complicate my life, but as it turns out, it has made my life easier rather than more difficult.

I developed a habit of constantly reading books and making deeper connections with friends I admired. I spent my time wisely on worthwhile things and friendships; there is no magic, just habits.

Any belief you took in a package (ex. Democrat, Catholic, American) is suspect and should be re-evaluated from base principles.

I like to have deep debates with people, and I find it almost impossible to find any package of thought that aligns 100% with my views.

Even if you agree on most issues, let’s say, with left-wing liberalism, if you are capable of thinking independently, you will inevitably disagree with their philosophy on certain points.

That is why I believe it is more responsible not to form fixed beliefs about any single ideology or person. You need to think from “first principles”.

While it is hard to do this across everything, it is much easier to just follow a group or a figure. People are lazy, and so am I. But if you want to be a true independent thinker, this is the only way.

Think for yourself. Avoid labeling yourself with rigid beliefs. Once you do, those beliefs start to shape your thinking, and that is dangerous.

I don’t actually read a lot of books. I pick up a lot of books and only get through a few which form the foundation of my knowledge.

I honestly think this concept has completely changed how I read. I used to read books thoroughly from start to finish, but the problem was I’d often get stuck. Most books have at least a few dull chapters, and when I hit those, I’d lose interest and stop reading altogether. That’s how my reading progress would stall.

What Naval suggests is different: he reads multiple books at once. On any given day, you just pick up the one you feel like reading. There’s no need to follow the order, no pressure to finish the whole thing, and no rules to limit you.

Just treat reading like a lifelong habit — something you keep doing, not something you need to “complete.”

I have written another article about “reading,” which you can refer to here.

Everyone’s brain works differently. Some people love to take notes. Actually, my notetaking is Twitter. I read and read and read. If I have some fundamental “ah-ha” insight or concept, Twitter forces me to distill it into a few characters.

Enlightened by this saying, I also started writing my notes of reading on Twitter back in 2023 for three months, but it didn’t continue so long, then I dropped… (needs to improve my consistancy)

The good news is that I started blogging again, but not on Twitter. I’m now blogging on Threads, a new Twitter-like platform.

I created an anonymous account on Threads and posted what I learned from books, videos, and real-world experience. Now I got over 1000 followers and still growing! 🤞

Productize Yourself

I used to be the kind of person who hated planning everything out in advance. I preferred to keep things “creative”, which means no strict routines, no rigid structure. Just go with the flow. Freestyle.

But working in venture capital changed that totally. My job required me to analyze startups, forecast their future, and build models based on data and signals. I had to turn messy, qualitative inputs into clean, quantitative outputs.

That’s when it hit me: I could apply the same mindset to myself. Treat my own career like a startup. Gather data. Build projections. Adjust the model.

In a way, productize myself.

So I started treating myself like a product. I set a long-term goal (I’ll share it later), laid out a few strategies, and just started executing. Not in a rigid way — more like: here’s the direction, let’s keep moving, adjust along the way.

I started writing more. Reaching out to people. Telling everyone what I’m trying to build. In a way, I’m increasing my surface area for luck — building in public, but with myself as the product.

I would rather be a failed entrepreneur than someone who never tried. Because even a failed entrepreneur has the skill set to make it on their own.

To explain how much I agree on this is another srtory/article, but I do deeply believe in this. Let’s make this my final word of this article. Marked my word.