The Almanack of Naval Ravikant – Review

Ravikant’s journey has been remarkable to say the least, from a humble background of having spent his childhood in a lower middle class family run by a single parent, he has transcended himself to a phenomenal venture capitalist. The fact that he has invested in over 200 early stage companies including the likes of Uber, Twitter, Postmates to name a few and amongst them, 10 have grown out to be unicorn companies, this highlights the quality of his foresight combined with enormous risk taking appetite.

The Almanack of Ravikant focusses on his tenets that laid the foundation for his phenomenal success, I have highlighted the ones that resonated with me.

*Love for reading books – This must be driven to a point wherein it becomes an obsession. Many super successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have known to spend 2 to 3 hours everyday on reading books. The number of books read within a year or month shouldn’t be a vanity metric but how much we derive value out of them is the key.

*Specific Knowledge – Ravikant states that specific knowledge can’t be taught but rather has to be learnt by oneself through dedicated work. On the same note, he denotes sales as a role of acquiring specific knowledge, I would view this tenet as a highly toned skillset

*Long term outlook – Be it business, career or relationships, we need to approach them with a long term outlook. A short term perspective is a sure shot to failure.  

*Accountability – Learning to be accountable for one’s failure is the key attribute. Without it, one doesn’t scale up nor course correct wherever required.

*Gamified approach to work – The attribute has been doing it’s rounds of discussion in many organizations but a significant number of professionals don’t really internalize such an approach. The idea of gamified approach is exhibit willingness to accept different challenges associated on work front, when that happens then the stress factor is negated.

*Happiness is a choice not a destiny – Whatever be our life situations, we can find a way to be happy. Ravikant states that the focus should be on peace and happiness can then be a constant byproduct.

*How to create wealth – Ravikanth makes a bond statement, in case he lost all his money and is dropped on a random street, he will still find a way to become wealthy in 5 to 10 years’ time. In his own statement, “Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it. It is much more about understanding than purely hard work.”

*Health - Being supremely fit lays the foundation of a successful life. Ravikant makes it point to workout every morning irrespective of his schedule and it sets him up for the day. He is 47 years old as I post this blog and the picture below is a clear indication of his fitness. 

There are many more principles that the author opens up but I leave it to the reader to explore it by themselves. On a self help book that’s aligned towards being practical as well, the Almanack ranks high.

Lastly, I was wondering why he named it as ‘The Almanack of Ravikant’, till the very end I couldn’t get the context 😊