How can a person achieve financial freedom without relying on luck?

I've never been interested in this book because its Chinese title, "Navar's Treasure Book," sounds so airport-bookstore-esque. It reminds me of catchy clickbait like "If You Don't Understand Management, You'll Work Yourself to Death!" I also felt the author's worldly achievements in Silicon Valley weren't exactly impressive, which predisposed me to biased reading. Recently, a good friend recommended it to me, so I finished reading it on a plane and found it quite engaging. The author actually only focuses on "how to make money" in the first half, while the second half dwells more on the wisdom he learned about achieving happiness from Buddha, Krishnamurti, Munger, and others. The first half is about being in the dust, while the second half goes straight to the heart. Here, I'll share the first half, which focuses on how to make money.

I think the core is three points: 1. How to increase income; 2. How to invest your remaining income and get compound interest growth; 3. How to manage desires and spending

1. How to increase revenue: Productize yourself and then leverage

There are four types of leverage: Capital leverage: making money work for you (investment). Human leverage: leading a team and letting others work for you. Code leverage. Media leverage.

Code and media are permissionless leverage. They are the key to the "new rich." You can create software and content that works for you while you sleep.

How to choose these levers? Be yourself. No one can compete with you on being you. If you have strong fundraising capabilities and are good at investing, then specializing in investment and asset management may be suitable. If you are good at programming, then you are definitely rich. But media is a lever that anyone can use: Ray Dalio in the investment industry, Perplexity in the coding industry, to every KOL, everyone should be like the e-commerce industry in the past DTC, that is, direct to your customer, direct to your audience. Look at Satoshi Nakamoto: a one-man company, Code + Media, created the highest human efficiency ratio in human business history - one person created a $2 trillion project.

A gentleman hides his talent and waits for the right time: Be patient. Believe that when the world needs a unique skill, you have that unique skill. In the meantime, you can build your personal brand on Twitter/YouTube/WeChat Video Account/Xiaohongshu and increase your visibility by providing free value.

How to choose a major? Choose a career that allows you to have fun. Your passion will drive you to be more engaged than others.

What's the most important job? Essentially, you either need to be able to sell or you need to be able to build. Those are the two things.

Avoid just "renting time": It is difficult to accumulate real wealth by simply selling time (working). You must find a way to "exchange time directly for money."

Manage your energy, not your time: Knowledge workers are like athletes—training and sprinting, then resting and reviewing; they are also like lions—either hunting, recuperating, or sleeping.

2. How to invest long-term and achieve compound interest

Don't rush into buying stocks or cryptocurrencies yet. Instead, improve your skills and judgment. You can't earn money beyond your knowledge. I'll share more about how to learn and what to learn when I have the chance.

Don't over-diversify: "The more you know, the less diversified you will be." Only when you have unique knowledge and judgment can you dare to concentrate your investments.

Understand, don’t follow: Don’t buy just because others are buying. Invest in an asset only when you truly understand it.

Trade less: Excessive trading consumes time and attention. True wealth often comes from holding high-quality assets for the long term. Of course, if you're one of the rare few, like George Soros II, your fate and destiny equip you to profit from trading, leverage, and long/short strategies, but 99.999% of people aren't.

Recommended Assets: 1. Stocks: Hold high-quality companies (especially tech companies) for the long term, and avoid short-term speculation. 2. Startups/Equity: The author is a renowned angel investor (including Uber, Twitter, etc.), but cautions that this is extremely risky for the average investor and requires insider knowledge and judgment. 3. Cryptocurrency: He invested early in Bitcoin and Ethereum and believes that cryptocurrency represents a new type of capital and financial infrastructure, but cautions that its risks and volatility must be addressed with caution.

3. How to manage desires and spending to achieve financial freedom

You earn money to solve financial and material problems. The best way to avoid a relentless obsession with money is to avoid constantly upgrading your lifestyle while earning it. As income increases, it's easy to "upgrade your lifestyle." If you can maintain a relatively stable lifestyle, preferably earning a large sum of money in a concentrated manner rather than incrementally, you won't have much opportunity to upgrade your lifestyle. This way, you'll likely go further and have a better chance of achieving true financial freedom. Those who live significantly below their financial means often enjoy a freedom unimaginable to those who are busy constantly upgrading their lifestyles.

There's a commonly used international standard for measuring financial freedom: if your investable assets reach 25 times your annual living expenses, you've achieved financial freedom. So, the less you spend, the lower the threshold for financial freedom. It's that simple.

About the Author: Naval Ravikant's major business achievements include: founding AngelList (a platform connecting startups with angel investors, revolutionizing early-stage financing); making early investments in multiple technology startups (such as Uber, Twitter, Stack Overflow, etc.), and having a keen ability to "discover potential companies"; managing venture capital funds (such as Hit Forge) and being involved in the cryptocurrency hedge fund MetaStable Capital; in addition, he also launched the Spearhead investment program to support entrepreneurs to become investors and thus expand their influence.