When you read books like these, you realise that everything is inter-connected, your work to your personal life, your ambition to your health, your wealth to your charity etc. I started reading it as if it was a book on work or building wealth, but it is easily an instruction manual for life. This is the first part of my summary on Naval’s insights into building and aspiring for wealth.

  • More than hard work, wealth is fundamentally about
    • WHAT to do
    • WHO to do it with &
    • WHEN to do it.
  • Energy is a limited resource, be mindful of where you spend it.
  • Seek Wealth, not Money or Status.
  • You can’t get rich merely by renting out your time, you have to own equity.
    • Build it yourself
    • Buy into it
    • Be a part of someone else building it
    • If you don’t own a part of a business, you don’t have an easy path towards financial freedom.
    • Without ownership your inputs are very closely tied to your outputs.
  • The internet has massively broadened the possible space of alternate careers. Most people have not figured this out as yet.
  • Cautiously Compound 
    • Wealth
    • Realtionships
    • Knowledge
    • Health
  • Don’t partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are usually self fulfilling.
  • Building specific knowledge will be play to you, but will look like work to others. To gain specific knowledge, look for apprenticeships, not degrees or diplomas.
  • Code and media are permission less leverages. Labor and Capital were leverages with which the last generation made their millions, the tide has turned to permission less leverages.If you can’t code :
    • Write Books 
    • Write Blogs
    • Record Videos
    • Record Podcasts
  • Build your brand on Twitter, on YouTube, and by giving away free work.
  • Avoid business magazines and study this instead
    • Micro Economics
    • Game Theory
    • Psychology
    • Persuasion
    • Ethics
    • Math &
    • Computers
  • Reading is faster than listening, doing is faster than watching.
  • Become the best in the world at whatever the hell it is that you do. Keep redefining your standards until this is true.
  • Technology democratises consumption, but consolidates production. The best person in the world gets to do it for everyone.
  • Once something works, it is no longer called technology.
  • Applied scientists are the most powerful people in the world. This will be obvious in the coming years.
  • Escape competition through authenticity. Don’t copy.
  • The best jobs are neither decreed or degreed. They are creative expressions of continuous learners in free markets.
  • Basic arithmetic and numeracy are way more important in life than doing calculus.
  • When you are dating, the instant you know that this relationship is not going to be the one that leads you to marriage, you should move on.
  • The people who have the ability to fail in public under their own names actually gain a lot of power.
  • People will forgive failures as long as you were honest about it and made a high quality effort.
  • The economic rewards for genuine intellectual curiosity have never been higher.
  • Knowledge only you know or only a small set of people know 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 these passions.
  • If it entertains you now, but will bore you someday, its a distraction. Keep Looking.
  • Don’t work in a place where, your input and not your output is accountable.
  • Earn with your mind, not with your time.
  • Stay out of things that can cause you to loose all of your capital.
  • Find work that is dependent on your judgement.
  • Spend a year deciding and a day acting. That act lasts decades.
  • Tinker. Solve. Scale.
  • Spend a lot of time making big decisions.
    • Where you live.
    • Who you are with.
    • What you do.
  • Figure out what you are good at and start helping other people with it. Give it away. Pay it forward. Karma works because people are consistent. On a long enough timescale, you will attract what you project. But don’t measure – your patience will run out.
  • Humans evolved as hunters and gatherers where we all worked for ourselves. Thanks to the internet, we are going back to an age where more and more people can work for themselves.
  • When your day is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired.
  • The punishment for the love of money is delivered at the same time as money. As you make money, you just want even more, and you become paranoid and fearful of losing what you already have. There simply is no free lunch.
  • The best way to stay away from the constant love for money is to not upgrade your lifestyle as you make money.
  • Freedom to/from
    • Do what you want
    • Not to do what you don’t want
    • Your own emotions
    • Things that disturb your peace
  • Networking is a complete waste of time.
  • If you are building something interesting, you will always have more people who will want to know you. Trying to build business relationships in advance of doing business is a complete waste of time.
  • Your real resume is basically a catalogue of all your suffering.

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