Book Review: Ego is the Enemy

By Ryan Holiday

Summarised in one quote:

Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned (p.8)

Each third of Ego is the Enemy caters for one of three life stages in which ego can rear its ugly head: when you are aspiring for success, when you have achieved success, and when you have failed.

No matter whether you are running a successful business, rebounding from a spectacular defeat, or, like me, embarking on a journey into the unknown, Ryan Holiday’s book will connect.

Ryan Holiday has a knack for asking the right questions without passing judgement. He shines a light on your decision making, and often reveals the skulking form of ego tampering with the controls. An invaluable read. For me, the first 100 pages blew my mind.

Book Notes

To be or to do?

Holiday passes on the teaching of John Boyd (who reinvented modern military aircraft and instructed nearly every major military thinker of a generation) who asks his students whether they want to be or to do.

Ryan distinguishes the two brilliantly.

‘If what matters is you — your reputation, your inclusion, your ease of life — your path is clear. Tell people what they want to hear. Seek attention over the quiet but important work. Say yes to promotions and generally follow the track that talented people take in the industry or field you’ve chosen. Pay your dues, check the boxes, put in your time, and leave things essentially as they are.’ (p.33)

And for to do…

‘If your purpose is something larger than you — to accomplish something, to prove something to yourself — then suddenly everything becomes both easier and more difficult. Easier in the sense that you know now what you need to do and what is important to you. The other “choices” wash away as they aren’t really choices at all. They’re distractions. It’s about the doing, not the recognition. Harder because each opportunity must be evaluated along strict guidelines: Does this help me do what I have set out to do? Am I being selfish or selfless? In this course, it is not about ‘Who do I want to be in life?’ but ‘What do I want to accomplish in life?’

Ryan’s words really help in reframing decisions according to one’s true goals, and help gut out the ego that might be steering you in another direction.

Is Passion the Right Word?

I was really intrigued by Holiday’s approach to ‘passion’. It’s both a loaded and meaningless term used to represent ‘unbridled enthusiasm, or willingness to pounce on what’s in front of us with the full measures of our zeal’.

Ego is the Enemy argues that we suffer from a survivorship bias when it comes to passion. We hear of the success stories built on a bottomless passion, but we forget the failures. George Bush was passionate about Iraq, Robert Falcon Scott was passionate about exploring the artic (and never returned) and the inventors of Segway were super passionate about their ‘world-changing’ invention.

No, instead we should have purpose. Passion is about (I am passionate about ______) whereas purpose is to and for (I was put here to accomplish ______, I must do _____ for _____).

‘Leave passion for the amateurs. Make it about what you feel you must do and say, not what you care about and wish to be.” (p.50)

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