A Must Read Book for Everyone, and I Mean It

It can truly change your life—and that too completely free!

Vritant Kumar

4 min readJul 13, 2021

The title seems a too click-baity but believe me it’s not—atleast not for this brilliant book.

To justify the title—A Must Read Book—it should pass some high bars, shouldn’t it? Let’s see how many it passes.

The Book

So the book is called THE ALMANACK OF NAVAL RAVIKANT by Eric Jorgensen (forward by Tim Ferris).

It is an easy and light read—for those who wanted to know. This book condenses all the tweets, podcasts, and interviews of Naval with perfection.

Who is Naval?

Naval Ravikant is an Indian-American entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder and former CEO of AngelList. He is also an early investor in billion-dollar companies like Uber, FourSquare, Twitter, Postmates, Notion, and Clubhouse, among many more.

But what he makes him even more famous is his timeless wisdom. He posts regularly on Twitter about philosophy, life, and startup and business, in general — where I first heard his name and followed him. He wrote a thread in 2017 titled HOW TO GET RICH WITHOUT GETTING LUCKY, read here, which went viral and has got 150K+ likes to date.

What I like most about Naval, is his rational optimism. He’s not blindly going to believe anything just because it’s popular, universally accepted, or said by someone. He likes to back everything with fundamental principles. That’s why his ideas and his take on their explanation seems so down-to-earth and is still an eye-opener.

He wanders several fields including technology, philosophy, religion, and life and happiness.

PART I: WEALTH

This book begins with one of the most controversial topic—wealth creation.

Wealth creation is the topic he discusses a lot. He doesn’t equate wealth with money. He’s got different definitions for either of them. He asks to seek wealth, not money or status.

His definition of wealth, money, and status goes like this: Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in social hierarchy.

In this part he discusses some critical concepts that go hand in hand with living a content life like, for instance, Wealth, Business, Judgement, Leverage, and Accountability.

Here are the topic he discusses in this part:

Understand How Wealth Is Created
Find and Build Specific Knowledge
Play Long-Term Games with Long-Term People
Take on Accountability
Build or Buy Equity in a Business
Find a Position of Leverage
Get Paid for Your Judgment
Prioritise and Focus
Find Work That Feels Like Play
How to Get Lucky
Be Patient

PART II: HAPPINESS

Hapiness remains his eternal quest throughout his journey. His objective of creating wealth was always to live a healthy and happy life. He dedicates other half of this book exploring this concept of Hapiness. He also touches important concepts of Philosophy, Religion, and Meditation on the way—not to mention all about their practical usefulness.

So here’s this part’s subtopics—to tell you more in less words.

Happiness Is Learned
Happiness Is a Choice
Happiness Requires Presence
Happiness Requires Peace
Every Desire Is a Chosen Unhappiness
Success Does Not Earn Happiness
Envy Is the Enemy of Happiness
Happiness Is Built by Habits
Find Happiness in Acceptance

Has this book passed that bar?

It’s upto you, after all, to decide if to give this book a read. But this book contains topic so universal and logic so rational that you can’t doubt its significance. This book is jam-packed with timeless wisdom and practical directions. And more than anything a spark of curiosity to search for the truth yourself. I can confidently recommend this book to everyone—children, professionals, parents, anyone—because there’s literally something for everyone. NOW GET THIS BOOK FOR FREE AND GIVE IT A READ.

HOW YOU CAN GET THIS BOOK FOR FREE?

Naval doesn’t take any comission from this book’s sales. He has made available this book (as an eBook) on places like Kindle, Kobo, Play Books, etc. for free. You can also read this book for free on its official site navalmanack.com. Before you go on to read this book, here are some quotes of Naval.