Monday Musings 008: Notes on the Almanack of Naval Ravikant

I recently read The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson. Eric compiles a bunch of Naval's thoughts on wealth, happiness, success, and philosophy, and distills it into a beautiful book.

I hadn't listened to, or read anything, from Naval until this, and I was blown away. There was so much to absorb that I had to bookmark my favorite pages. 

In this post, I outline some of my favorite moments and my explorations into what I think they meant. Anything written in italics is quoted from the book. It is the intellectual property of Naval. 

You can get a free PDF of the book here. 

Pg 77: Discusses life games and the hedonic treadmill 

Any end goal will just lead to another goal, lead to another goal. We just play games in life. When you grow up, you’re playing the school game, or you’re playing the social game. Then you’re playing the money game, and then you’re playing the status game. These games just have longer and longer and longer lived horizons. At some point, at least I believe, these are all just games. These are games where the outcome really stops mattering once you see through the game. 

Then you just get tired of games. I would say I’m at the stage where I’m just tired of games. \I don’t think there is any end goal or purpose. I’m just living life as I want to. I’m literally just doing it moment to moment. I want to be off the hedonic treadmill. 

Further exploration of the hedonic treadmill concept:

• The observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. 
• Conceptualized as a treadmill, since no matter how hard one tries to gain an increase in happiness, one will remain in the same place. 
• Coined by Brickman and Campbell in their 1971 article, “Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society”.
• They described the tendency of people to keep a fairly stable baseline level of happiness despite external events and fluctuations in demographic circumstances. 
• Fujita and Diener conducted a study in 2005 where they described life satisfaction as a “soft baseline”. Typically, life satisfaction will hover around a set point for the majority of their lives and not change dramatically. But for a quarter of the population, the set point is not stable and does indeed move in response to a major life event. 
• Subjective well-being might be largely determined by genetics; that is, happiness may be a heritable trait. 
• Applications 
• As a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness. 
• Explains why people who achieve wealth, status, and fame continue to seek more. When we finally achieve or acquire what we are seeking, we adapt to our success and then it no longer gives us pleasure. As a result, we begin seeking something new, and the cycle repeats. [source]
• Critical Viewpoints
• The set point can be influenced. While we may have a predetermined “happiness set point” that is hereditary, we may be able to increase or decrease the hedonic set point. 
• Hedonic adaptation might be more common when dealing with positive events as opposed to negative ones. People tend to focus more on negative emotions than positive ones, which can be an obstacle in raising a happiness set point. 

Pg 102: Discusses pre-decided and packaged beliefs

Any belief you took in a package (ex. Democrat, Catholic, American) is suspect and should be re-evaluated from base principles.

I try not to have too much I’ve pre-decided. I think creating identities and labels locks you in and keeps you from seeing the truth. 

I used to identify as a libertarian, but then I would find myself defending positions I hadn’t really thought through because they’re a part of the libertarian canon. If all your beliefs line up into neat little bundles, you should be highly suspicious. 

Reflection: This resonates with me. I have always struggled to fall into the identity of a group, whether that’s a political party, sports team, etc, because I see people who tie themselves closely to a group identity get lazy about thinking about what they truly believe. I have made an effort to only speak on things that I have thought about, and to listen to opinions from all sides. It is hard to do. 

Pg 106. Collect Mental Models 

Decision-making is everything. A lousy way to do memory prediction is X happened in the past, therefore X will happen in the future. It’s too based on specific circumstances. What you want is principles. You want mental models. 

To build more mental models, read a lot - just read. 

What is memory prediction: A mental framework theorized by Jeff Hawkins in On Intelligence. Says that the outermost layer of our brain acts as a giant hierarchical memory bank. We use it to store all the events we experience as patterns. At the same times, we use previously stored patterns to predict what to expect next. Core finding: intelligence is the capacity of the brain to predict the future by analogy of the past. [source]

Reflection: I don’t think my decision making skills are consciously refined, but the decisions that have felt right from the beginning are generally good ones. 

Pg 112-113: Discusses making the harder decision 

If you have two choices to make, and they’re relatively equal choices, take the path more difficult and more painful in the short term. 

Your brain is overvaluing the side with the short-term happiness and trying to avoid the one with short-term pain. Most gains in life come from suffering in the short term so you can get paid in the long term. 

Reflection: I really struggle with this. For example, I know that stretching at least 10 minutes per day will make a huge difference in my mobility later in life and now, but I can convince myself very easily to not do that. 

Pg 139 - Talks about the balance of health, time and happiness

When you’re young and healthy, you can do more. By doing more, you’re actually taking on more and more desires. You don’t realize this is slowly destroying your happiness. I find younger people are less happy but more healthy. Older people are more happy but less healthy. 

When you’re young, you have time. 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. By the time people realize they have enough money, they’ve lost their time and their health. 

Reflection: Be aware of the trifecta but don’t stress too hard about trying to achieve it, because that leads into the desire problem that he talks about. 

Pg 148 - Talks about happiness as a skill 

As humans, we’re used to taking everything for granted. Like what you and I are doing right now. We’re sitting indoors, wearing clothes, well-fed, and communicating with each other through space and time. We should be two monkeys sitting in the jungle right now watching the sun going down, asking ourselves where we are going to sleep.

When we get something, we assume the world owes it to us. If you’re present, you’ll realize how many gifts and how much abundance there is around us at all times. 

The most important trick to being happy is to realize happiness is a skill you develop and a choice you make. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. 

Reflection: I spend a lot of time ruminating on why I have a hard time maintaining a constant state of happiness. Maybe that time should be spent on actively working on things that will develop my happiness. 

Pg 154 - Embracing death 

When you look at your death and you acknowledge it, rather than running away from it, it’ll bring great meaning to your life. 

There is no legacy. There’s nothing to leave. We’re all going to be gone. Our children will be gone. Our works will be dust. Our civilizations will be dust. Our planet and solar system will be dust. 

Your life is a firefly blink in a night. You’re here for such a brief period of time. If you fully acknowledge the futility of what you’re doing, then I think it can bring great happiness and peace because you realize this is a game. But it’s a fun game. All that matters is you experience your reality as you go through life. Why not interpret it in the most positive possible way? 

Reflection: Take yourself less seriously. 

Pg 187: Everyone is making it up 

Be aware there are no adults. Everyone makes it up as they go along. You have to find your own path, picking, choosing, and discarding as you see fit. Figure it out yourself, and do it. 

Reflection: No one actually has their shit together, and anyone that says they do is lying.