Ryan Holiday: Ego is the Enemy - book review

A useful book, if I were to generalize. However, there were a few parts that bothered me. First, the most important: although Ryan talked about “ego” all the time, he didn’t even properly define it, which is a surprising omission. Most anecdotes were relevant, but at times he brought examples of humbleness which were, frankly, strange choices: Chancellor Angela Merkel, Metallica’s Kirk Hammett (which is debatable) and Genghis Khan (for being open to different cultures and always taking the best merchants, craftsmen and warriors in his horde, thus admitting that he didn’t know it all; ekhm, how about the mass rapes and pillages though? He must’ve had a big ego if he thought he was justified in doing that).

He also made a few generalizations about “quiet” people being more virtuous. Although I could emotionally sympathize with this idea (I’m a quiet person myself), I couldn’t help but think it sounded like one of those skewed perceptions about reality you have in your teenage years. People are more complex than that, the virtuousness of being quiet and reserved is contextual and depends on the culture.

Again, I agree with the thesis of this book, I do think that ego is a big impediment to a lot of people, not to mention how annoying it is to have to deal with people who have big egos. But the book—although wide in scope and anecdotes—lacked depth and sound arguments. Anytime he mentioned ancient philosophers like Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Diogenes I smiled and nodded, but then again it was nothing new to me. He just scratched the surface.

I particularly like his ideas of “Be less, do more” and “You can’t learn if you think you already know.”—but that’s nothing new, really. Still, they’re good reminders.

Here’s a few other ideas that are useful:

“The ability to evaluate one’s own ability is the most important skill of all. Without it, improvement is impossible.”

“Practice seeing yourself with a little distance. Get out of your own head. Detachment is a natural ego antidote.”

“What a lot of us do when we’re scared or overwhelmed by a project: everything but focus on it.”

“What we require in our ascent is purpose and realism…Purpose is about pursuing something outside yourself as opposed to pleasuring yourself.”

“As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”

I get it, this book sits at the intersection of Stoicism and self-help, which is an interesting perspective, and its accessibility definitely helps (I like the idea of more people getting to know some ideas of ancient philosophy), but it lacks deeper insight that could make me question things and go deeper into the specificity and nature of “ego”. Maybe that’s not what Holiday had set to do, maybe he wanted to write a self-help and not a philosophical book, which is fair enough, yet, I felt slightly disappointed.

I enjoyed it, but more in a “yep yep, mhm, of course” way and not in a “really? Aha, didn’t think about that, tell me more?” way. In other words, it just confirmed some of my beliefs, told me some interesting stories of public people, and made a few sweeping generalizations that made me feel good, but which ultimately didn’t teach me anything new (reminded me of Dale Carnegie, although I think Carnegie’s anecdotes were more interesting and insightful). And still, I would recommend it to a lot of people, mostly to those who don’t read much, and especially to those who need a reminder. As a light read, it’s a good enough book and it’s worth spending the time on it.

Rating: 3.5/5