Naval approaches reading like a master craftsman uses tools: with intention, skill, and complete disregard for convention.
He discovered reading early through necessity. “I was raised by a single mom in New York, and she used the local library as a daycare center… So I used to basically live in the library, and I read everything”. This childhood gave him something most people never get: total freedom to explore ideas without gatekeepers. The library became his first taste of intellectual sovereignty.
Naval rejects the modern obsession with completion. “I got over this idea of that reading a large number of books or reading a book to completion as a vanity metric”. He sees through the social signaling of book counts. Instead, he reads for deep understanding. “I would rather read the best 100 books over and over again until I absorbed them, rather than read all the books”.
His method breaks every rule. “Thanks to electronic books I’ve got 50, 70 books open at any time on my Kindle or iBooks and I’m just bouncing around between them”. This parallel processing mirrors how the mind naturally works. He reads by mood, by interest, by genuine desire. “I don’t read anymore to complete books, I read to satisfy my genuine intellectual curiosity”.
This principle reveals Naval’s genius: he builds sustainable systems through pleasure, not discipline. “You basically want to start off just reading wherever you are and then keep building up from there until reading becomes a habit”. Authentic interests create lasting habits. Forced reading creates mental resistance.
Naval prioritizes ancient wisdom over modern content. “If you’re talking about an old problem like how to generally keep your body healthy, how to stay calm, how to be peaceful, how to be happy, how to find love, those are very old problems. Those problems were created thousands of years ago and have been solved thousands of years ago”. He seeks timeless truth, not trending opinions. Old books survive because they contain enduring value.
He reads for foundational knowledge. “You really want to focus on the foundations. The ultimate foundation are mathematics and logic”. Mathematics, physics, and first principles thinking teach you how to think, not what to think. These become intellectual assets that compound over decades.
Reading becomes multiplicative leverage through compounding. “Then you compound that with how long you can keep doing it and how long you can keep improving it through reading and learning”. Each book builds on previous ones, creating a web of interconnected models. Knowledge compounds exponentially like invested capital.
Naval reads for concepts, not facts. “I no longer track books read or even care about books read. It’s about understanding concepts”. True understanding means being able to “describe it in 10 different ways, in simple sentences from the ground up”. This builds superior judgment through deep comprehension.
“It’s better to read a great book slowly than to fly through a hundred books quickly”
His timing reveals another insight: “If I’m inspired to read a book, I want to read it right then… If I want to learn something, do it at the moment of curiosity”. This creates learning loops where interest and action align. Curiosity becomes the incentive system for continuous growth.
Naval’s reading approach makes him antifragile: randomness strengthens his knowledge base rather than fragmenting it. By following genuine curiosity across disciplines, he builds specific knowledge that can’t be replicated. His reading becomes intellectual ownership of ideas others merely rent.