I've been studying @naval for years now.
I've read "The Almanack," listened to the full 3.5 hours of "How to Get Rich," absorbed his best podcasts, pondered countless tweets, and more.
Here are 20 highlights you should know (thread 👇):
"Answers to all the great questions are paradoxes … Pursuing them is actually really useful because then it gives you certain intrinsic understanding in your life that brings a level of peace." — @naval
"I think the closest I can articulate ... is to keep growing and learning in the short period of time that you have. To seek truth and to accept things the way they are. To see the world the way it really is. Then, just to live your life." — @naval
If @naval could put on thing on a billboard, it would be:
"Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want."
"I think the most common mistake for humanity is believing you’re going to be made happy because of some external circumstance." — @naval
@naval's most surprising discovery in the last five years is that peace & happiness are skills & choices:
"The most important trick to being happy is to realize happiness is a skill you develop and a choice you make. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it."
"Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion. You can convert peace into happiness anytime you want. But peace is what you want most of the time. If you’re a peaceful person, anything you do will be a happy activity." — @naval
"You have to be very careful because sometimes the voices talking in your head that you think is you is actually social programming." — @naval
"Life is really a single-player game. It’s all going on in your head. Whatever you think and believe will very much shape your reality." — @naval
- What you do
- Who you spend time with
- Where you live
Big Getting Rich Decisions:
- Knowing what to do
- Who to do it with
- When to do it
- Health (Physical, Mental, Spiritual)
- Happiness
- Love / Family
- Mission / Work
- Wealth
"Becoming a perpetual learner. You have to know how to learn anything you want to learn." — @naval
Ultimate Meta-Skill:
"Reading (learning) is the ultimate meta-skill and can be traded for anything else." — @naval
- Reading
- Writing
- Arithmetic
- Persuasion (which is talking)
- Computer Programming (an applied form of arithmetic)
- Execution (getting things done, solving problems)
- Wealth creation / making money
- Read originals & classics
- Read the greats in math, science, philosophy
- Microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, computers
- Evolution, thermodynamics, information theory, complexity
"Money is not going to solve all of your problems; but it’s going to solve all of your money problems." — @naval
Wealth:
"My definition of wealth is oriented toward businesses and assets that can earn while you sleep." — @naval
"You’re probably not going to create wealth through work. There are many reasons for that, but the most basic is because your inputs are very closely tied to your outputs. You can’t earn non-linearly." — @naval
- Creating something new from scratch
- Predicting that society will want it
- Figuring out how to scale it and get it to everybody in a profitable, self-sustaining way
- You love to do it
- It’s natural and authentic to you
- You know how to do it the best
- Society wants it but doesn’t know how to get it
- Demonstrated judgment
- High accountability
- Leverage
- Long timescale
"The combination of the three should be your overwhelming goal. The most important thing for any entrepreneur is to find founder-product-market fit." — @naval
"Impatience with actions, patience with results. I think that’s a good philosophy for life." — @naval
All the benefits & returns in life come from compounding:
- Wealth
- Relationships
- Love
- Health
- Habits
- Learning
- Reading
- Knowledge
- Creating
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1/OK, data mystery time.
This New York Times feature shows China with a Gini Index of less than 30, which would make it more equal than Canada, France, or the Netherlands. https://t.co/g3Sv6DZTDE
That's weird. Income inequality in China is legendary.
Let's check this number.
2/The New York Times cites the World Bank's recent report, "Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations Around the World".
The report is available here:
3/The World Bank report has a graph in which it appears to show the same value for China's Gini - under 0.3.
The graph cites the World Development Indicators as its source for the income inequality data.
4/The World Development Indicators are available at the World Bank's website.
Here's the Gini index: https://t.co/MvylQzpX6A
It looks as if the latest estimate for China's Gini is 42.2.
That estimate is from 2012.
5/A Gini of 42.2 would put China in the same neighborhood as the U.S., whose Gini was estimated at 41 in 2013.
I can't find the <30 number anywhere. The only other estimate in the tables for China is from 2008, when it was estimated at 42.8.
This New York Times feature shows China with a Gini Index of less than 30, which would make it more equal than Canada, France, or the Netherlands. https://t.co/g3Sv6DZTDE
That's weird. Income inequality in China is legendary.
Let's check this number.
2/The New York Times cites the World Bank's recent report, "Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations Around the World".
The report is available here:
3/The World Bank report has a graph in which it appears to show the same value for China's Gini - under 0.3.
The graph cites the World Development Indicators as its source for the income inequality data.
4/The World Development Indicators are available at the World Bank's website.
Here's the Gini index: https://t.co/MvylQzpX6A
It looks as if the latest estimate for China's Gini is 42.2.
That estimate is from 2012.
5/A Gini of 42.2 would put China in the same neighborhood as the U.S., whose Gini was estimated at 41 in 2013.
I can't find the <30 number anywhere. The only other estimate in the tables for China is from 2008, when it was estimated at 42.8.