Thoughts on the book— The Alamanack of Naval Ravikant

Brilliant book. I stumbled upon the book and picked it up for listening. I didn’t know much about Naval, so it helped me listen without preconceived notions.

In the first part of the book, he talks about wealth and then moves to Happiness. It’s an exciting format building on Twitter threads, questions and gathered thoughts.

Book explains his guiding principles and foundations. Throughout the book, there is an emphasis on first principles, clarity of thoughts and balance required in everything we do. You will find simple analogies and examples to drive home the concept.

I could connect with reading style book describes instantly as to an extent I have a similar reading pattern. While I have finished some books in single sitting cover to cover, I leave many books unfinished as they get repetitive after a point.

One concept which I am particularly intrigued by is Self Worth and the detailing around it. Everything in the first section revolves around this. Another thought — meditation has an interesting example. Book talks about Tim Ferris’ podcast with Wim Hof, aka the iceman. Naval says “I was very inspired by him, not only because he’s capable of super-human physical feats, but because he does it while being incredibly kind and happy — which is not easy to accomplish.” There is another interesting quote — “Insight meditation lets you run your brain in debug mode until you realize you’re just a subroutine in a larger program.” I haven’t fathomed it yet.

At times you feel like he is talking about things because he has a lot of money. But only Naval knows his evolution.

The last section is the gold mine, where book talks about books, blogs and podcasts.

Overall I am glad that I read the book.

Book is available for free for anyone to read here