Book Review: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

I read The Almanack of Naval Ravikant in December 2020, my first winter after leaving the traditional career path, when every belief I had about money was up for renegotiation. Few books have ever met me at a better time.

The setup is unusual: Naval Ravikant (angel investor, AngelList co-founder, tech’s unofficial philosopher-in-residence) never wrote a book, so Eric Jorgenson compiled a decade of his tweets, interviews, and podcast conversations into one volume: half on wealth, half on happiness. You can read it free online, which tells you something about how sincerely the ideas inside are meant.

What I Loved About The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson

The wealth half handed me vocabulary I’ve used ever since: specific knowledge, productize yourself, and above all leverage. Naval’s point is that media and code are permissionless kinds of leverage — nobody has to greenlight your newsletter, your book, or your weird little website. For a writer, that idea is oxygen. Every piece I publish keeps working while I sleep, and that principle became the spine of my whole business, and honestly of Write for Money and Power as well. It compounds, too: the newsletter business I started with those ideas crossed $267,537 in gross annualized revenue (revenue, not take-home — I keep it honest around here).

The happiness half is why I press this book on people who couldn’t care less about startups. Happiness as a trainable skill, desire as a contract you sign with yourself to stay unhappy until you get the thing — these perspectives are so well distilled they border on unfair. Everyone who cares about living well should read this one.

What I Didn’t Love About The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

It’s a compilation, and it reads like one. Ideas repeat across chapters in slightly different wording, and the aphorism density can blur if you take it straight through like a novel. This is a nightstand book: a few pages at a time, then go stare out a window and reconsider your business model.

Final Thoughts on The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

Endlessly valuable is the phrase I keep landing on. Of every book on this shelf, this is the one whose ideas I catch myself repeating most. It pairs naturally with The Pathless Path: Naval for the operating principles, Millerd for the permission slip.

My final score: 5 out of 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Do I recommend this book? 👍 Yes — and the free online version means you’re out of excuses.

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