Being prepared for the future of work begins with a mindset shift around how you think of work and how you understand value creation.  One of the first books that anybody who is considering being an independent contractor should read is The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.   If you’re not familiar with who Naval is, the quick bio is that he’s a serial entrepreneur who co-founded AngelList.  More importantly, he’s an entrepreneur who has invested in over 200 companies (including several unicorns) and is well known for his forward-thinking insight on entrepreneurship, technology, and investing.

The book is an extended version of his viral 2018 thread on Twitter about How to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky).  I first read the thread a little while after it went viral.  At the time, I found the thread interesting enough, thought of it for maybe 2 minutes, and then moved on to whatever the next interesting tweet was. My head wasn’t in that mindset and—looking back—I wasn’t ready to fully understand or implement much of the genius that was divulged in that thread.

Three years later, sometime in early 2021, I came across the thread again and it burned itself in my mind for days. By that time, I had been researching the history and future of work for several months.  Reading the thread was as though the feelings that were bubbling beneath my mind’s surface had erupted into a powerful freight engine hurtling at 1,000mph into an enlightenment induced by the 40 train cars behind it, each carrying 180-characters of tweeting brilliance.  

There are dozens upon dozens of nuggets every person can relate to in this book.  It’s not just for entrepreneurs or independents.  It has insights for many aspects of life including happiness, family, decision-making and, of course, money.

Three key insights I took away in my own words and adapted with my own spin based on my experiences:

1. The name of the game is to own and control capital.  If you don’t own a piece of an asset that can make you money while you sleep, you will never be wealthy.
2. Always be learning.  The most important skill is to learn and to discern what is even worth learning about and worth working on.  Follow your curiosity and learn about the things that excite you, then place your own unique spin on it while executing in a manner that makes it difficult to easily replicate.
3. These days, everyday people can build leverage through coding, books, and developing their own media platforms.  Since these things are permissionless, you don’t need anyone to transfer them to you (like money) or to rent out your time (like labor).  So start creating.  Build something and put it on the internet.

As icing on the cake, the end of the book provides recommendations for other books to read and people who have invaluable insights.  It’s from this part of the book that I learned about Prof. Feynman, Nassim Taleb, and a few other modern thought leaders who I’ve come to love.

Here are some of the sentences I still have highlighted in my iBooks library:

On the Principal-Agent Problem

On Decision Making

On Doing Things:

On Jealousy:

In summary, this book is a must-read for everyone.  However, like most good books, if your mind isn’t ready to receive its wisdom, it’s unlikely you’ll apply the insights in practical ways that will actually impact your life.  For me, this is one of the handful of books I’ll come back to and re-read at least one or twice a year. It’s that good.