Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)
Comments: I’ve appreciated multiple insights from reading Naval Ravikant’s blog over the years. This year introduced me to a couple new ones while reminding me of the older ones.
Insights that resonated: My favorite insights from Naval either came from the book or via his blog. They are:
(1) “Wisdom is understanding the long-term consequences of your actions.”
(2) “A calm mind, a fit body and a house full of love. These things can not be bought. They must be earned.”
(3) “To me, the ultimate purpose of money (is) so you do not have to be in a specific place at a specific time doing anything you don’t want to do.”
(4) Long term games with long term people –
- Pick an industry where you can play long-term games with long-term people. Long-term players make each other rich. Short-term players make themselves rich.
- All returns in life come from compound interest over many turns of long-term games—and they usually come at the end.
- People do right by each other when they know they’ll be around for the next turn of the game. And friction goes down, so you can do bigger and bigger things together.
(5) One thing I figured out kind of late is that generally, at least in the tech business in Silicon Valley, great people have great outcomes. You just have to be patient. Every person that I met at the beginning of my career 20 years
ago, where I looked at them and said, “Wow, that guy or that gal is super capable. They’re so smart and dedicated and blah, blah, blah. Now we’ll just be friends or hang out or whatever”, and then I kind of forgot about them, all of them, almost without exception, became extremely successful. You just had to give them a long enough timescale. It never happens in the timescale you want or they want, but it does happen.
Marler's Observatory 