First Google built a superior product. Then it built excitement by making it invite-only. And by steadily increasing the number of invites allowed to its existing user base, Gmail spread from person to person until it became the most popular, and in many ways the best, free e-mail service. Enormous.
With success, particularly power, come some of the greatest and most dangerous delusions: entitlement, control, and paranoia. Hopefully you won’t find yourself so crazed that you start anthropomorphizing, and inflicting retribution on inanimate objects.
Having an end in mind is no guarantee that you’ll reach it – no Stoic would tolerate that assumption – but not having an end in mind is a guarantee you won’t.
How you do anything is how you can do everything.
A growth hacker is someone who has thrown out the playbook of traditional marketing and replaced it with only what is testable, trackable, and scalable. Their tools are e-mails, pay-per-click ads, blogs, and platform APIs instead of commercials, publicity, and money.
You must be able to explicitly say who you are building your thing for. You must know what you are aiming for – you’ll miss otherwise. You need to know this so you can make the decisions that go into properly positioning the project for them. You.
If you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.
He says the best way out is always through And I agree to that, or in so far As I can see no way out but through. – ROBERT FROST.
The ego we see most commonly goes by a more casual definition: an unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition. That’s.
Without an accurate accounting of our own abilities compared to others, what we have is not confidence but delusion. How are we supposed to reach, motivate, or lead other people if we can’t relate to their needs – because we’ve lost touch with our own?
This is why we can’t let externals determine whether something was worth it or not. It’s on us.
Precisely what makes us so promising as thinkers, doers, creatives, and entrepreneurs, what drives us to the top of those fields, makes us vulnerable to this darker side of the psyche. Now.
Forgive them; they are deprived of truth. They wouldn’t do this if they weren’t. Use this knowledge to be gentle and gracious.
We will learn that though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek.” Ryan Holliday, Ego is the Enemy, pg 22.
A man is worked upon by what he works on,” Frederick Douglass once said.
When you can break apart something, or look at it from some new angle, it loses its power over you.
There are two ways to be wealthy – to get everything you want or to want everything you have.
While you’re sleeping, traveling, attending meetings, or messing around online, the same thing is happening to you. You’re going soft. You’re not aggressive enough. You’re not pressing ahead. You’ve got a million reasons why you can’t move at a faster pace. This all makes the obstacles in your life loom very large.
Ego is more than just off-putting and obnoxious. Instead, it’s the sworn enemy of our ability to learn and grow.
If you’re not still learning, you’re already dying.” Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy, pg 104.