The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
by Eric Jogerson
You are not limited by talent or luck; you are limited by the systems you build and the identity you operate from. Wealth is not hours traded; it is ownership and leverage. Happiness is not a mood; it is the absence of internal noise. Both are skills, and both compound. Design a life in which everything that matters, such as wealth, knowledge, relationships and clarity, compounds quietly in the background. The work is choosing the right games, becoming someone specific enough to win them, and cultivating a mind that is not pulled off course by cravings, comparison or noise. Naval gives principles. You still have to do the uncomfortable part: reshaping the identity that keeps you defaulting to the wrong games.
- Wealth is identity, not tactics: Ownership only works when you become someone who can tolerate uncertainty, delayed gratification and being misunderstood while you build.
- Leverage is the great equaliser: The modern world does not reward effort; it rewards outputs that scale without your presence. Most people know this, yet very few restructure their lives around it.
- Specific knowledge is self-discovery in action: You do not learn it; you uncover it by paying attention to what feels natural and doubling down until it becomes undeniable.
- Happiness is subtraction, not addition: Peace emerges when you stop negotiating with desires that never belonged to you in the first place.
- Long-term games require a long-term self: You cannot play compounding games with an identity that resets every time you feel insecure. Stability of self is the real leverage.
Choose one area in which you want compounding (wealth, skill or clarity). Strip away the surface goals. Identify the behaviour that actually compounds, the part you avoid, and commit to the smallest unit of consistent action for 30 days. No optimisation. Just compounding.