Seek Wealth, Not Money or Status

Naval draws a three-way distinction: wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep (a business, equity, property, code, media); money is simply how we transfer time and wealth between people (a medium of exchange, not a store of value in itself); status is your position in a social hierarchy, which is necessarily zero-sum — for you to rise in rank, someone else must fall. He argues chasing status is a trap precisely because the gains are relative and can't compound for everyone at once, while wealth creation is genuinely positive-sum: you can build something that makes the world better off and capture value as a byproduct.