CHAPTER 05
Eric's Note (About This Book)
Read It
Eric Jorgenson made a choice that most people wouldn't. He spent years collecting Naval's scattered tweets, podcast clips, and blog posts, then shaped them into a book. The alternative was to let those ideas keep drifting through the feed, half-remembered and easily lost. The cost of his choice was real: he had to cut everything that didn't fit the two main themes, wealth and happiness. Naval has said plenty about other things, but those didn't make the cut. That's the trade at the heart of this note. Curation isn't just gathering; it's deciding what matters enough to preserve. Jorgenson believed Naval's ideas were worth preserving because Naval had tested them against his own life and appeared genuinely content. That combination—success without misery—is rare enough to justify the effort.
Open full image ↗Draw It
There are two stories tangled together in this note. One is about Naval: how he built wealth and stayed happy. The other is about Eric: how studying Naval changed his own patience and approach to compounding. If you read the note as just an introduction, you miss the second story. The diagram separates them. Naval's life is the content; Eric's transformation is the motivation. The book exists because Eric wanted to make Naval's ideas durable, searchable, repeatable—not just for himself but for anyone who needs them. That's why the book is designed for non-linear reading. It's a reference, not a narrative. You're supposed to come back to it, not finish it.
Rethink It
Engineering teams face the same choice constantly. Do we write down the architecture decisions, or do we leave them in meeting notes and chat logs? Most teams choose the latter because writing takes time and the payoff isn't immediate. But Eric's example shows what's lost when you don't. The decisions that shape a system's direction disappear when people leave. New engineers inherit a codebase without the reasoning behind it. The cost of not curating is paid later, with interest. If a decision is important enough to influence the team's future, it's important enough to write down.
Take It With You
Curation is a form of judgment. If something is worth remembering, it's worth the cost of preserving it. The question is always: what am I willing to cut to keep this?