The Fantastic Life

Naval is right..

If you have Twitter, you should be following @naval.  His tweets are fantastic, thought-provoking, and simplify complex concepts easily.  If you are cautious about who you follow, read below for more on Naval.  Here are some of my favorite Twitter threads from him.

–His thread on meditation is genius.

–His thread on getting rich is genius:

Below there is more including:

–Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep.

— Read what you love until you love to read

–Think long term.


Rule #11: Don’t Waste Time

Social media can be a huge time suck. But, it can also be a source of inspiration and connection. Finding that balance, carefully examining who you follow and how you engage, can help ensure you aren’t wasting time.


5 Life Lessons From The World’s Best Simplifier
On money, clarity, reading, and more.

By Summit Garg

February 9, 2021


Source: Naval

Naval is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and he’s also one of the most courageous,” writes Tim Ferriss, a guy who has made a career out of interviewing world-class performers in a variety of fields.

Tim even adds a bullet-point outline of why he takes Naval so seriously:

  • Naval questions nearly everything
  • Can think from first principles
  • Tests things well
  • Is good at not fooling himself
  • Changes his mind regularly
  • Laughs a lot
  • Thinks holistically
  • Thinks long-term
  • And doesn’t take himself too goddamn seriously.

His thoughts, which he shares on Twitter, are full of wisdom and leave you craving for more. So while I could do a dozen iterations of this article and still not run out of ideas to share, here’s just five of them that really hit me.

  1. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth.

We are wired to believe that the conventional way to make money is the only one out there. The one where we exchange time for money. You work hard at something every day, and at the end of the day, week, or month, get paid in return. It’s true whether you’re a doctor or a barista.

Naval argues that you’re never going to get rich renting out your time. And the only way to make wealth is by having assets that earn while you sleep. It could be a piece of equity in a business that you may or may not own. Or you could write a piece of code, or a book, or prepare an online course.

The point is to build something once and sell it as many times as you want. That’s how you get ahead. Think of it like this: a teacher teaching students the same lessons over and over again every year, versus one who spends a few months preparing an online course that earns way more in just a couple of years than what the other teacher would make in a lifetime.

  1. Picking the direction you’re heading in for every decision is far, far more important than how much force you apply.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push,” wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein. And it was Abraham Lincoln who taught us long ago to spend a ridiculously large amount of time in sharpening the ax rather than in cutting down the tree. Hard work isn’t a proxy for everything else.

  1. Being able to convey yourself simply using ordinary English words is far more important than being able to write poetry, having an extensive vocabulary, or speaking seven different foreign languages.

It all really comes down to, can you or can you not explain it to a five-year-old? Because if you can’t, you haven’t understood it, at least not well enough. According to Naval, foundations are key. Once you get the basics right, you can always use them to understand and simplify a ton of jargon.

When you encounter something difficult, ask, “What is the foundation required for me to learn this?”

  1. I probably read one to two hours a day. That puts me in the top .00001 percent. I think that alone accounts for any material success I’ve had in my life and any intelligence I might have.

Simply put, most people don’t read at all.

Here is a little how-to read your books from Naval:

  • “Read what you love until you love to read.”
  • Re-read.
  • There’s no rush. The better the book the more slowly it should be read.
  • That said, skim freely, skip a few chapters, especially when there’s a ton of repetition. In fact, you’re not obliged to finish a book, drop it if you have to.

Just read more often.

  1. It takes time — even once you have all of these pieces in place, there is an indeterminate amount of time you have to put in. If you’re counting, you’ll run out of patience before success actually arrives.

You have to put in a lot of iterations. 10, 100, or 1000, there’s no way to know. And you should stop counting, you’ll know it when you reach there. But it isn’t going to be easy. So you have to remain patient. And you have to remember that there’s no instant gratification. And there’s no getting rich quick.

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