Ego is the Enemy

I picked up this one after seeing how some wins can make people make bad choices. I watched people (including myself) mess up the moment they we see some success, and especially when so much of the hustle culture that I’m exposed to is built on the very concept that you should belief in yourself no matter what.

The book makes this point well: Ryan argues that ego destroys success. He says it’s better to doubt yourself a little than to believe you’re always right, even when you actually are right about something.

There’s something interesting here. Sam Altman writes in “How to Be Successful” that “self-belief is immensely powerful” and “the most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to a delusional degree.”.

I admire Sam, but I think he’s mostly talking about a few brilliant people. For most of us, that kind of thinking is dangerous. I’ve seen even brilliant people make bad choices because they believed they were right.

There’s a difference between believing in your work and believing you’re always right. When you believe in your work, you say “I think this could work, let me try it.” When your ego takes over, you say “I’m right and everyone else is wrong.”

Looking back at my biggest mistakes, they almost always happened when I cared more about looking smart than finding the truth. I’d ask myself “what will people think of me?” instead of “what’s actually going on here?”

The best thing I realized is you don’t need to be special to do good work. Actually thinking you’re special often stops you from doing the work at all. Holiday calls this “The canvas strategy”. Willing to be invisible and focusing on making others look good has served me well and has led to make me have a bigger impact than I ever thought possible.

Ego looks like strength but it’s actually weakness. It’s not being able to sit with not knowing things. Not being able to admit you don’t know stuff. Not being able to change direction when you’re wrong. Real strength is more like being curious than being certain.

Written with the aid of Claude Sonnet.