Posts by Ryan Holiday
How to See Opportunities Where Others See Obstacles
The story of Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg is the story of a central truth of history: that strength often becomes a weakness and weakness can be transformed into strength. The great strategist Saul Alinsky believed that if you “push a negative hard enough and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.” Every…
Read MoreWhy You Should Be Pessimistic
To most people, philosophy is some confusing academic enterprise that’s of little practical use. When they want to make their lives better, they don’t turn to the ancients, they look to self-help gurus and how-to manuals. Which is funny because philosophy, in its truest most classical form, is actually civilization’s oldest and most-effective form of…
Read More#1 Secret of Churchill & Productivity
If you read a lot or are someone who gets a lot done, people will assume two things. One, that you’re a speed reader. Two, that you never sleep. In my experience, neither of those assumptions are true. Or at least, they don’t need to be. There’s no trick to reading a lot. But more importantly, no…
Read MoreHow to Learn the Art of Speed Reading
Caught you looking for a shortcut didn’t I? Don’t worry, it’s an understandable one. Reading is important. We’re all busy. It’s natural that we’d want to do more of it, more quickly. That’s why we google ‘speed reading’, check out apps that supposedly help us and ask other readers for their “secrets.” But as I’ve…
Read MoreHow to Learn the Art of Speed Reading
Caught you looking for a shortcut didn’t I? Don’t worry, it’s an understandable one. Reading is important. We’re all busy. It’s natural that we’d want to do more of it, more quickly. That’s why we google ‘speed reading’, check out apps that supposedly help us and ask other readers for their “secrets.” But as I’ve…
Read More3 Questions You Need to Answer
In life, we come across all sorts of decision points, particularly if we choose to go into business for ourselves. Should I do ______? What about ______? Is _______ a good idea? What to do in each one of those situations can be exhausting and stressful and costly. If we’re not careful, we can find…
Read MoreHow to Write a Book
Writing a book can be a long, hard slog. The “miserable” parts of the experience have been documented over and over again. Or just ask any author on a book deadline — or let the thousand-yard stare speak for itself. Not all of us can have an entire corporation behind them like James Patterson does,…
Read MoreHow to Hack Your Way to Success
Before he became the most brilliant and famous man in the ad business, David Ogilvy sold vacuum cleaners door to door. Because of that, he never forgot that advertising is just a slightly more scalable form of creating demand than door to door sales. But the rest of us, decades away from a world of traveling salesmen…
Read MoreHow to Stay Sane When Finishing a Big Project
It’s the eve of a big launch. Maybe a year went into this project. Maybe ten years. Your life savings or your entire reputation could be on the line. Maybe you’re launching a book. Or a startup. Or a course. Or you work for a company that is rolling out a new product that they’ve put…
Read MoreThe Best Reminder Ever
I’m not sure where I stole the idea from, but I am a big proponent of printing out good advice and putting it right in front of your desk, or wherever you work everyday. So you cannot run from the advice, so you see it enough times that it becomes imprinted in your mind. The…
Read More#1 Philosophy for Success in Life
The history of war and combat is filled with stories of men (and women) snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Impossible circumstances, unfavorable odds, somehow they still lead to almost miraculous triumphs. What I set out to do with my latest book was study the traits that make this possible and how they can be applied…
Read MoreMy Creative Secret: Quantity Over Quality — And Commitments
I promise I’m not writing this because I have a deadline. Or, well, I actually kind of am. See, I’ve found that my output depends almost entirely on my level of commitments (either internal or external). Consider it kind of a reverse Parkinson’s Law. Parkinson’s Law states that a task will take exactly the amount of…
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