Ego Is the Enemy

Three of the ideas you’ll keep

The Clif summary of Ego Is the Enemy pulls out 10 insights. Here are the first three.

1. Holiday's working definition of ego isn't confidence, it's 'an unhealthy belief in our own importance,' arrogance and self-centered ambition. It's the voice that needs to be recognized more than it needs to be right.
2. The book maps ego onto the three phases every life cycles through. Aspire, Success, Failure, because ego sabotages each differently: it inflates us before we've earned anything, corrupts us once we have, and makes defeat unsurvivable by refusing to let go.
3. Talk is the enemy of work. Holiday cites research that voicing your goals can hand you the satisfaction of having achieved them; the impressive talker burns the very energy the work requires. Do, don't announce.

The other 7 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.

What’s inside: 8 chapters

The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.

1. Ego Is the Enemy: One Foe, Three Battlefields
2. Aspire: Talk Little, Do Much
3. To Be or To Do: Boyd's Fork in the Road
4. Become a Student and Run the Canvas Strategy
5. Restrain Yourself, and Beware Blind Passion
6. Success: Stay a Student and Beware the Disease of Me
7. Failure: Alive Time or Dead Time
8. Maintain Your Sobriety: The Cycle Never Ends