The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

Text in black are quotes; text in green are my notes. I sometimes write in Spanish.

• You should be too busy to “do coffee” while still keeping an uncluttered calendar. #

  • Tener un calendario lleno de juntas y cosas que hacer no te hace más productivo, aunque otras personas lo vean así.
  • Esa forma de "estar ocupado" refleja la idea de que tu tiempo está a disposición de otros, más bien. De que no eres dueño de tu tiempo.
  • Deberías estar ocupado, sí, pero con un calendario limpio.

• It’s ownership versus wage work. If you are paid for renting out your time, even lawyers and doctors, you can make some money, but you’re not going to make the money that gives you financial freedom. You’re not going to have passive income where a business is earning for you while you are on vacation. #

  • Puedes ganar mucho dinero vendiendo tu tiempo, y es así como la mayoría empezamos a ganar dinero, pero ese tipo de dinero no será el que te compre la libertad financiera porque el ingreso está acoplado con tu tiempo.
  • El tipo de dinero que te permitirá ser libre financieramente es el dinero que generas mientras duermes o estás de vacaciones. El dinero que un negocio te puede generar.
  • ¿Deberíamos todos dejar de ser empleados alguna vez y crear nuestros propios negocios? Antes estaba en contra de tener un negocio, pensaba que era algo de mucho estrés y con bajas probabilidades de éxito. Pero cada vez me inclino más a tener ese negocio propio que me de más satisfacción y que me permita crecer mis ingresos sin depender de lo que otra persona me diga.

• Whenever you can in life, optimize for independence rather than pay. If you have independence and you’re accountable on your output, as opposed to your input—that’s the dream. [10] #

• Earn with your mind, not your time. #

• Because money is not going to solve all of your problems, but it’s going to solve all of your money problems. People realize that, so they want to make money. #

• The problem is, to win at a status game, you have to put somebody else down. That’s why you should avoid status games in your life—they make you into an angry, combative person. #

  • Este tema sigue apareciendo en distintas fuentes y siempre me recuerda a Culiacán, donde los juegos de estatus, de quién tiene más, siempre están a la merced.
  • Uno de los lugares con mayores cirugías plásticas, donde más gasta dinero la gente en cosas que no les importan, para impresionar a gente que no les cae bien, con dinero que no tienen (o sí, pero ni siquiera es de procedencia legal).

• Spend more time making the big decisions. There are basically three really big decisions you make in your early life: where you live, who you’re with, and what you do. #

  • Hay tres decisiones importantes en tu vida que uno hace a una temprana edad: dónde vives, con quién te juntas y qué haces.
  • No estoy tan feliz con la última, con lo que yo hago, pues tengo tantas ideas y tantas cosas que me gustaría hacer pero me autosaboteo y termino haciendo pocas o ninguna de esas cosas.
  • Look for Economic Interconectedness. #

• Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired. #

• Well, one way is to have so much money saved that your passive income (without you lifting a finger) covers your burn rate. A second is you just drive your burn rate down to zero—you become a monk. A third is you’re doing something you love. You enjoy it so much, it’s not about the money. So there are multiple ways to retirement. #

  • Existen múltiples formas de retirarse: Tus inversiones pasivas te mantienen; no gastas absolutamente nada (te conviertes en un monje); haces algo que te apasiona tanto que ya no se trata 100% sobre el dinero. Esta última opción es la que busco para mi retiro.

• Another thing that helps: I value freedom above everything else. All kinds of freedom: freedom to do what I want, freedom from things I don’t want to do, freedom from my own emotions or things that may disturb my peace. For me, freedom is my number one value. #

• I think that is a brilliant formulation. In a long-term game, it’s positive sum. We’re all baking the pie together. We’re trying to make it as big as possible. And in a short-term game, we’re cutting up the pie. #

  • Todos deberíamos jugar juegos de suma positiva, en donde nos apoyamos y crecemos juntos, donde los objetivos se complementan en lugar de oponerse.
  • Donde todos cocinamos juntos el pastel en lugar de cortarlo e intentar quedarnos con la parte más grande.

• What making money will do is solve your money problems. It will remove a set of things that could get in the way of being happy, but it is not going to make you happy. #

  • Yo digo que el dinero no compra la felicidad, pero sí te ayuda a comprar libertad. Y con esa libertad, puedes alcanzar la felicidad.
  • Naval hace una reflexión que me gustó mucho: El dinero te ayudará a resolver tus problemas de dinero y a quitar del camino aquello que te impide ser feliz, pero como tal, el dinero no te hará feliz.
  • Aunque sigue siendo importante no tener esas barreras que te detengan a ser feliz. Si solo trabajas y ganas para pagar tus necesidades básicas, pues nunca podrás avanzar y alcanzar una plenitud que te haga feliz.

• It’s only after you’re bored you have the great ideas. It’s never going to be when you’re stressed, or busy, running around or rushed. Make the time. [7] #

• Very smart people tend to be weird since they insist on thinking everything through for themselves. #

• It’s really important for me to be honest. I don’t go out of my way volunteering negative or nasty things. I would combine radical honesty with an old rule Warren Buffett has, which is praise specifically, criticize generally. I try to follow this. I don’t always follow it, but I think I follow it enough to have made a difference in my life. #

  • Este extracto me recordó al proceso de feedback que hacemos en Nu.
  • Muy pocas veces he visto mencionar casos específicos en las retroalimentaciones, y las veces que lo he visto, sí son sobre cosas buenas, nunca sobre las cosas malas.
  • Creo que esta idea de ser específicos en las buenas cosas y más generales en las malas es una buena práctica que debería comenzar a aplicar más.

• If you can be more right and more rational, you’re going to get nonlinear returns in your life. I love the blog Farnam Street because it really focuses on helping you be more accurate, an overall better decision-maker. Decision-making is everything. [4] #

• If you cannot decide, the answer is no. And the reason is, modern society is full of options. There are tons and tons of options. #

• If you find yourself creating a spreadsheet for a decision with a list of yes’s and no’s, pros and cons, checks and balances, why this is good or bad…forget it. If you cannot decide, the answer is no. #

  • Solamente hago matrices de decisión para mi trabajo; no recuerdo haberlo hecho para mi vida personal. Normalmente tengo claro que es lo que quiero en mi vida personal, en cuanto a las decisiones grandes se refiere, aunque quizás debería también comenzar a practicarlo.
  • Aunque coincido un poco con la reflexión de Naval , también creo que no puede ser tan binario.
  • En lo que sí coincido es que si una decisión necesita tanto desarrollo y trabajo, quizás los beneficios no son tan grandes como para hacerlo. Si los beneficios fueran obvios, no necesitaría todos esos documentos.

• With the law of compound interest, long-term gain is what you want to go toward. #

• These days, I find myself rereading as much (or more) as I do reading. A tweet from @illacertus said, “I don’t want to read everything. I just want to read the 100 great books over and over again.” I think there’s a lot to that idea. It’s really more about identifying the great books for you because different books speak to different people. Then, you can really absorb those. #

  • No recuerdo por qué, pero hace poco recuerdo haber pensado algo similar.
  • Hay libros, películas y recursos que me han gustado tanto que simplemente quiero releerlas y absorberlas más. Por ejemplo, los libros de los estoicos.
  • Creo que la presión (mía y en general de las redes) es, sigue leyendo cosas nuevas, lleva el registro y siéntente orgulloso. Eso no da mucho espacio a releer cosas.
  • Un Goodreads, pero enfocado únicamente en lo que cada uno considera los mejores libros. El objetivo, encontrar los mejores 100 libros y leerlos una y otra vez.

• The number of books completed is a vanity metric. As you know more, you leave more books unfinished. Focus on new concepts with predictive power. #

• A calm mind, a fit body, and a house full of love. These things cannot be bought. They must be earned. #

• The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reverse. #

• We constantly walk around thinking, “I need this,” or “I need that,” trapped in the web of desires. Happiness is the state when nothing is missing. When nothing is missing, your mind shuts down and stops running into the past or future to regret something or to plan something. #

• To me, happiness is not about positive thoughts. It’s not about negative thoughts. It’s about the absence of desire, especially the absence of desire for external things. The fewer desires I can have, the more I can accept the current state of things, the less my mind is moving, because the mind really exists in motion toward the future or the past. The more present I am, the happier and more content I will be. #

• Happiness to me is mainly not suffering, not desiring, not thinking too much about the future or the past, really embracing the present moment and the reality of what is, and the way it is. [4] #

• At any given time, when you’re walking down the streets, a very small percentage of your brain is focused on the present. The rest is planning the future or regretting the past. This keeps you from having an incredible experience. It’s keeping you from seeing the beauty in everything and for being grateful for where you are. You can literally destroy your happiness if you spend all of your time living in delusions of the future. [4] #

• It’s always the next thing, then the next thing, the next thing after that, then the next thing after that creating this pervasive anxiety. It’s most obvious if you ever just sit down and try and do nothing, nothing. I mean nothing, I mean not read a book, I mean not listen to music, I mean literally just sit down and do nothing. You can’t do it, because there’s anxiety always trying to make you get up and go, get up and go, get up and go. I think it’s important just being aware the anxiety is making you unhappy. The anxiety is just a series of running thoughts. #

  • Es difícil no hacer nada. No recuerdo la última vez que me senté sin hacer nada, sin revisar Twitter o Reddit, sin leer, sin escuchar música.

• A happy person isn’t someone who’s happy all the time. It’s someone who effortlessly interprets events in such a way that they don’t lose their innate peace. #

• You have health, but you have no money. When you’re middle-aged, you have money and you have health, but you have no time. When you’re old, you have money and you have time, but you have no health. So the trifecta is trying to get all three at once. #

• Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion. #

  • Para mi, la felicidad no es simplemente pensar cosas felices o estar sonriendo todo el tiempo, sino un estilo de vida en donde estás en paz con lo que eres, hacia dónde vas y en donde estuviste.
  • No es la total ausencia de pensamientos negativos, porque es muy difícil evitarlos todo el tiempo, pero es la falta de deseos o de pensar en cosas que te hacen falta.
  • La felicidad es estar y vivir el presente, de la forma en que es y no en la forma que pudiera ser.

• Do you want to actually be that person with all of their reactions, their desires, their family, their happiness level, their outlook on life, their self-image? If you’re not willing to do a wholesale, 24/7, 100 percent swap with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous. Once I came to that realization, jealousy faded away because I don’t want to be anybody else. I’m perfectly happy being me. By the way, even that is under my control. To be happy being me. It’s just there are no social rewards for it. [4] #

• At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people who you spend the most time with. #

• The first rule of handling conflict is: Don’t hang around people who constantly engage in conflict. I’m not interested in anything unsustainable or even hard to sustain, including difficult relationships. [5] #

• A personal metric: how much of the day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of interest? #

  • ¿Qué tanto tiempo del día pasamos haciendo cosas por obligación más que cosas por interés?
  • Es una buena preguntar para hacernos a nosotros mismos.

• World’s simplest diet: The more processed the food, the less one should consume. #

• One of the things Krishnamurti talks about is being in an internal state of revolution. You should always be internally ready for a complete change. Whenever we say we’re going to try to do something or try to form a habit, we’re wimping out. #

• Impatience with actions, patience with results. #

• The modern struggle: Lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower, fasting, meditating, and exercising… Up against armies of scientists and statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, and medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games, and addictive drugs. #

  • No creo poder decirlo mejor, así que solo dejo la referencia porque me gustó mucho este párrafo.

• All benefits in life come from compound interest, whether in money, relationships, love, health, activities, or habits. #