Navalmanack Key Points

• When you do things for their own sake, you create your best work. Even if you’re just trying to make money, you will actually be the most successful. 
• Figure out what you’re good at, and start helping other people with it. Give it away. Pay it forward. Karma works because people are consistent.
• Become the best at what you do. Refine what you do until this is true. Opportunity will seek you out. 
• No one in the world is going to beat you at being you.
• My definition of wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions. Wisdom applied to external problems is judgment. 
• I think being successful is just about not making mistakes. It’s not about having correct judgment. It’s about avoiding incorrect judgments.  
• The really smart thinkers are clear thinkers. They understand the basics at a very, very fundamental level.  
• 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. 
• Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit. 
• Charisma is the ability to project confidence and love at the same time. It’s almost always possible to be honest and positive.  
• When you are the principal, then you are the owner—you care, and you will do a great job. When you are the agent and you are doing it on somebody else’s behalf, you can do a bad job. You just don’t care. You optimize for yourself rather than for the principal’s assets. 
• Simple heuristic: If you’re evenly split on a difficult decision, take the path more painful in the short term. 
• As you know, most of the gains in life come from suffering in the short term so you can get paid in the long term.
• The classical virtues are all decision-making heuristics to make one optimize for the long term rather than for the short term. 
• The good news is, the moment of suffering—when you’re in pain—is a moment of truth. It is a moment where you’re forced to embrace reality the way it actually is. Then, you can make meaningful change and progress. You can only make progress when you’re starting with the truth.
• Your real résumé is just a catalog of all your suffering. If I ask you to describe your real life to yourself, and you look back from your deathbed at the interesting things you’ve done, it’s all going to be around the sacrifices you made, the hard things you did. 
• Impatience with actions, patience with results. 
• The freedom I’m looking for is internal freedom. It’s “freedom from.” Freedom from reaction. Freedom from feeling angry. Freedom from being sad. Freedom from being forced to do things. 
• All benefits in life come from compound interest, whether in money, relationships, love, health, activities, or habits. 
• A calm mind, a fit body, and a house full of love. These things cannot be bought. They must be earned. 
• Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years.