THE ALMANACK OF NAVAL RAVIKANT

Book: THE ALMANACK OF NAVAL RAVIKANT
Author: Eric Jorgenson (Illustrations by Jack Butcher)
Genre: Non-fiction 
No. of Pages: 242
ISBN: 978-93-5489-389-6
Language: English 
Published by: HarperBusiness (30 September 2021)

 

For those who aren't die-hard fans of self-help books, it can be disheartening to sift through countless pages without finding something that addresses those hidden-unspoken doubts, inspires the quest for answers, and guides the journey across past, present, and future, encompassing all facets of life, and above all, is written with brevity!

 

Clearly, no one introduced them to an accessible format of well-curated tokens of wisdom from a world-class entrepreneur, self-taught investor, first-principles thinker, and the founder and chairman of “AngelList”, Naval Ravikant! Packed with subtle truths and much-needed knowledge that one might look for as a guiding light, Eric Jorgenson, compiled this Navalmanack entirely from the transcripts, talks and tweets of Naval Ravikant (‘out of context’ as mentioned in the disclaimer but left to the generous interpretation of the readers) and presented them in a structural, non-narrative way, cited appropriately along with a source list at the end of the book.

Bonus: A free version of this book is offered to the world as a public service in a digital format.

 

BLURB

Forwarded by Tim Ferris, the book consists of two parts - Wealth and Happiness which is adequately highlighted, justly edited and concisely illustrated for the readers’ clarity and conceptual understanding of the subject matter. 

Part 1 is Naval guiding on the business world: -

A. ‘Building Wealth’, wherein, not only he discussed the concept of wealth generation, networking, cashing the luck and the domain knowledge required to build and utilize the assets, but also how to align creativity with money-making, recognizing the limitations, converting them into favourable alternatives whilst prioritizing your time and strength ethically.

B. ‘Building Judgement’, encompasses the tools for mastering decision making and harnessing the beauty of mental models from evolution, game theory, inversion etc. to make accurate judgements. Read, read and read! Preferably math, science, microeconomics, statistics, persuasion, psychology, philosophy and whatever that keeps you turning pages. Fun-Fact: reading has been Naval’s first love. And ours too!

 

Part 2 entails the questioned and tested wisdom to learn happiness, self-care and rational philosophy of life. Contexts from the realms of religion and spirituality, health and fitness, Osho and Buddhism, and practical approaches to mind and body, the excerpts in this part of the book are a guide to our personal peace.
 

The end of the book has a list of recommendations of Naval’s favourite books along with a short review and a QR code for each book to scan and twitter accounts/blogs/essays to go through. A beautiful section of Naval’s writings, ‘’Life Formulas” (2008) and “Naval’s Rules” (2016) is also briefed in pointers.

 

CONCLUSION

 

As expressed by Tim Ferris and after having read the book, it is evident that Naval Ravikant believes in thinking freely, questioning and introspecting nearly everything, knows how to intellectually connect the dots to re-evaluate/redefine/re-mould the absolutes, and above all, doesn’t take himself too seriously! One of the soul reasons why this book is a holy script in the genre of self-help non-fiction novels.

Clearly, an interesting format of wisdom, worth reading and pondering over.