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The "Obstacle is The Way" is a very popular book and now sits on my nightstand. I have drawn a lot of strength from it as I endure difficult struggles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Obstacle_Is_the_Way

After just finishing my dessert, Jeri Westerson's latest Crispin Guest Mystery, I'm on to more serious matter in The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday.

For those interested in learning more, I highly recommend Ryan Holiday's book The Obstacle is the Way which gives a great high-level modern take on stoicism. The classics are also obviously great too.

Morning train ride: The Personal MBA.

Evening train ride: Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures using Python.

Best read in a while: The Obstacle is the Way. Great intro to Stoicism, and only $4.00 on the kindle.

The Ego is the Enemy is not a good book IMHO. It is a blog post repeated to fit into a book. The Obstacle is the Way is Ryan Holiday's good work.

Try to read "A Guide to the Good Life" or Epictetus's Enchiredion. Good stuff.

I read The Obstacle is the Way last year and I liked it. Also, Man's Search Meaning is a very interesting book about the personal experiences of Viktor Frankl surviving 4 concentration camp during World War. His outlook on enduring suffering and overcoming it is very deep and enlightening.

For an intro to stoicism you should start with Seneca's letters and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations before you jump into Guide to the Good Life (which I do not recommend, despite Derek's praise of it)

Also, check out the upcoming book 'The Obstacle is the Way' by Ryan Holiday - http://www.amazon.com/The-Obstacle-Is-Way-Timeless/dp/159184...

Supposedly, The Obstacle is the Way is in the vein. I haven't read it yet; it's on my list this month though. Supposedly a fairly good read though. It's written by a big PR guy though so who knows.

http://www.amazon.com/Obstacle-Way-Timeless-Turning-Triumph/...

The 9 books mentioned in the video are as follows:

1. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

2. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

3. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

4. The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

5. The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

6. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

7. Mastery by George Leonard

8. Mindfulness for Beginners by Jon Kabat-Zinn

9. The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday

Books on interacting with people.

How to Win Friends and Influence People. - Dale Carnegie

Influence - Robert Cialdini

Books on understanding how to push through adversity

The Obstacle Is The Way - Ryan Holiday

Man's Search For Meaning - Victor Frankly

Books on process improvement

The Phoenix Project

The Four Hour Work Week - Tim Ferriss (ignore the outsourcing bit, listen to his podcast)

Books on breaking out of your thought bubble.

Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

Ishmael - David Quinn

Books for understanding how sales works

Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes

Negotiate As If Your Life Depended on It - Chris Voss

Any of these books are great starts. If the leadership big bites you there's way more I can suggest. Most of these are a mix of classics and new stuff. I've read them all and they want have their own style and provide their own insight. The trick is to find out what parts work with how you do and incorporate them into your flow. The learning process never ends.

I'd start with "Letters from a Stoic" by Seneca, then read "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius. If you're looking for a modern interpretation of these thoughts check out "The Obstacle is the Way" by Ryan Holiday

I am fortunate that I can think of ideas pretty quickly but I get overwhelmed with what tech to use. If you can just standardize on a platform you know, set your ego aside and use that. You can always iterate a working project but you can't do anything with unfinished work.

If you want to learn new, shiny tech, do small proof of concept projects and consider if they bring any value to what you've already built with what you already know.

Aside from that... you just have to do the work!

A book I've really enjoyed for my motivation across not only work and side project but also life in general is The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday: https://www.amazon.com/Obstacle-Way-Timeless-Turning-Triumph...

You're definitely going to like The Obstacle Is The Way if you want to go deeper into stoicism.

It is based on that line from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and it's about turning obstacles upside down.

(Desktop/tablet only).

I used to be terrible at remembering what I read, and I read a lot.

Then one day I heard about The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using Everything You Read as popularised by the authors Ryan Holiday (The Obstacle is the Way) and Robert Greene (Mastery, The 48 Laws of Power). It requires you to copy out - in your own words, and by hand - the key anecdotes, phrases, and quotes from books. It requires a bit of work to do, but boy, was it a game-changer. The act of writing key parts out again in my own words helps me remember waaaaay more than simply reading it.

The problem with that system, however, is that you have to write everything out by hand, which means that your notes aren't exactly accessible, you can lose/damage them, and finding shelf space for all the boxes actually starts to become a problem. So I built this web app which is based on the system, but obviously with all the improvements one can implement with a digital version. I can cross-reference my notes, tag them, search and generate a citation at the click of a button etc

I built this for myself, but some friends and family asked to use it, so I added user accounts, a landing page, and put it on a domain I’ve had for years.

Ignore the fact that there’s a pricing page - it’s completely free to use. I built and designed the entirety of the app in my spare time (I’m a car mechanic by day). It’s nothing more than a standard Rails app.

Would love to get your feedback!

You're welcome, I really hope this helps!

If you want to read books (level up!), I'd recommend this for early stage entrepreneurs:

- The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael E. Gerber. Some of it is a bit outdated maybe, maybe, but it's still a great perspective for first-time founders, especially working solo.

- The Obstacle Is The Way, by Ryan holiday. It's a rather short and simple introduction to Stoicism. If you know nothing about it (or about Zen) I strongly suggest taking a look. It's a philosophy which correlates strongly with successful entrepreneurs, people who make/build things, athletes, soldiers — those who prevailed when faced hard challenges in every way (especially emotional, spiritual even, things that can really take you down, the storms of life and fires in our minds).

As you can see there's one for your business and one for you. I find that it works like that, you need to grow to grow the business, which in turns makes you grow, rinse and repeat.

Best of luck, or should I say courage!

The Obstacle is the Way (somewhat encouraging)

The Art of Empathy (very interesting)

The Three Body Problem (good)

The Startup Way (decent)

The Politics of Bitcoin (short but interesting)

Why We Sleep (very much worth it)

The Last Arrow (mixed feelings)

The Prize (boring but informative)

Superhuman by Habit (OK, not much new)

The Circle of Profit (straight to the point)

Thinking in Systems (couldn't finish it)

Radical Candor (awesome)

Harry Potter #1 (too low of a reading level)

Man's Search for Meaning (classic)

Flow (Amazing!)

Scary Close (great)

I'm learning how to be better. I started reading Farnam Street about two months ago, and picked up Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle is the Way two weeks ago. Meditations: A New Translation and Thinking Fast and Slow are on their way. I'm facing not a crisis of self, but a realization that I am at a point where in order to move forward, and achieve what I want to achieve, I have some huge ego driven flaws that require a megalithic perspective shift.

I met Zach when he first started uBiome and moved to Chile. He was pationate about what he was building, and about the opportunity and impact it could have on the world. This was 2011, so he was in the very early stages. If I recall correctly, he was calling uBiome the 23&Me of your gut biome instead of DNA.

He was absolutely the last person I would expect to be caught up in something like this, and when the news first broke a few years ago, I reached out as an act of support, not looking to find out what happened, or anything, just thinking to myself....how did this happen, this isn't the Zach I know, maybe he needs someone to talk to.

The lesson in this I think isn't to just pile on about how SV is full of frauds, and pile on with a bunch of hate, but rather to understand that there is a slippery slope, and people get caught on the wrong side of it. Make sure that doesn't happen to you.

It further strikes close to home because I'm the founder of a sleep-tech company (https://soundmind.co), an industry full of snake-oil and BS. We're extremely conscious of this view of the industry, and call it out where we can.

I've also seen many start-up pitches where the numbers thrown around are absolute BS, companies that I know aren't doing well, and the founders yell about the million dollar deals they have.

It's the one thing I hate about this industry, but the gong continues to bang on about growth, growth, growth and the numbers you need to hit.

Many, many founders take the easy way out, but, to quote Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is The Way.

Any suggestions on how we fight this general rah-rah-BS attitude in the industry?

Have you looked into Stoicism? It's got a lot of the Buddhist elements of learning to accept the present while also focusing on achievement. I think of it in some ways as a Western-friendly mindfulness approach. A Guide to the Good Life [1] is a great book on the subject, and in the past has helped me be more effective in life, while also being happier. I've also heard good things about The Obstacle Is the Way [2].

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic/dp/01953...

[2]: http://www.amazon.com/Obstacle-Way-Timeless-Turning-Triumph/...

I second the OP. The "emotional" motivation has brought me quite far in my life. I always enjoyed learning. I got into programming because it was easily triggering the "reward circuits" in my brain. But as life follows, there are more and more things that need to be done, but require quite some mental effort to start.

So I decided it is time for a paradigm shift. I would rather do things I consider worth doing, instead of doing those that my brain finds attractive and immediately rewarding. I am following this paradigm for a few months now, and can confirm that satisfaction coming when the job is finished is truly rewarding.

Related reading: "The obstacle is the way", by Ryan Holiday. A very concise introduction to stoicism philosophy. The life approach presented by the author has many common points with those of OP.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18668059-the-obstacle-is...

The very things that you think are holding you back, is an opportunity to do something, make things better.

Recommend reading Ryan Holiday's the Obstacle is The Way, good food for thought for anyone facing difficulty. Here's a podcast interview> http://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/04/26/art-of-manliness-po...

I've struggled with brutal insomnia (getting to sleep and staying asleep) my entire life (45 years old now). Over the years, I've gotten pretty good at forcing myself to get to work early and just made due with 4-6 hours on most nights and trying to make it up on the weekends.

Early this year I discovered medical marijuana. It's completely game changing. A few puffs from a vaporizer (with flower, not the terrible oil pens) and I've had some of the best sleep of my entire life. I don't remember a time when I've ever actually felt good waking up until now.

The other key (for me) was the book, "The Obstacle is the Way" by Ryan Holiday. This helped me dramatically reduce the nonsense and worries that would crowd my mind as I tried to fall asleep.

Obviously YMMV, but these two things together have helped far more and far longer (6 months now) than anything else I've ever tried.

Hi,

I'm 25 too, I've been like you and I'm starting to getting out of this 'crisis'.

Like you I lived awesome things in the last 5 years, things that I would have never think I will accomplish.

I don't have a solution for you, but for me what's worked is reading books (non-fiction). In a book, you will generally find a condensed version of the life of the author and that's great. In a few hours you'll understand what he went through, how he did this or that and what they learned from that experience.

And that's great because at 25, your lack of experience doesn't help you make choices.

Here is a few books I can recommend you:

- Choose Yourself (James Altucher & Dick Costolo) - It's mostly about how to become your own boss, but there's a few chapter that are really useful when your a bit 'lost' or in 'crisis'

- The Obstacle is the Way (Ryan Holiday) - Really great reading!

- Satisfaction (Gregory Berns) - I'm in the first chapter but it's seems to be a good book.

These books are really easy to read.

If you don't like reading, listen to James Altucher podcast https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ask-altucher/id868149214...

Code Complete, Clean Code, and Debugging were profoundly educational to me as a junior developer. The Obstacle is the Way helped me deal with personal issues, but it's still a work in progress. The Joy of Less was a great introduction to minimalism. I just started reading Neuromancer but its got me hooked on the scifi/cyberpunk genre.

I've read The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy. I like his writing, but there is a business-y type of vibe to it.

I also recently picked up The Daily Stoic book, which does help me get into a Stoic "mindset" (for lack of a better term) to start my day. Although with the way Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is written, you could almost just open up to a random page each morning, read a passage and reflect. But so far I've enjoyed this book.

Depends on what you're after. If you like the 4 hour work week and want to change your lifestyle then I'd read inspiration for the four hour work week; vagabonding by Ralf Potts and more recently the obstacle is the way by Ryan Holiday. At the end of this month I'll be heading off on a round the world trip with no return ticket starting in india. I have the four hour work week to thank for that, I changed my job to one where I was able to work remote, started my own product gocaller.co.uk whether it's going to bring income to support long term travel will be interesting to see, nevertheless it's a fun ride. I feel more confident now that I can go back to doing what im doing now I love software development and the interesting people I've had the pleasure of working with

Zero to One by Peter Thiel and The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

Non-fiction:

Tough to call. I got a lot out of Deep Work by Cal Newport, The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday, How To Win At The Sport Of Business by Mark Cuban, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, and The Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler, as well as the three Grant Cardone books I read: The 10x Rule, Sell or Be Sold and Be Obsessed or Be Average.

Fiction:

I'll go with The Whispering Room by Dean Koontz. A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami was also pretty good.

You can see the entire list of what I've read lately (and further back) on my Goodreads profile:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/33942804-phillip-rhodes

or, if this link is visible publicly, on this "2017 in books" page:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2017/33942804

The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday.

The three best-known literary products of Stoic culture and philosophy are probably:

- Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (make sure to get the Hays translation! By far the best). Aurelius was an emperor of Rome; Meditations are his musings to himself in later life. It's interesting to reading the internal grapplings of a man who was, to his countrymen, basically a walking god.

- Lucius Annaeus Seneca's Letters from a Stoic

- Epictetus' Enchiridion, which translates roughly as "handbook" and was assembled from the teachings of Epictetus, an exiled former slave, to those who traveled to live and study with him.

I strongly recommend all three. If you're interested in more modern interpretations of the above, a couple good jumping off points would be A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine (which was mostly pretty good) or The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot (which studies Meditations). Ryan Holiday also has a book called The Obstacle Is The Way, though I didn't enjoy it as much as any listed above, to be honest.

A personal favorite gem which, found several years ago: http://stoicletters.blogspot.com/. This blog bundles Seneca's letters into a modern style of prose and is much more accessible while conveying much of the same meaning as the original letters.

For stoicism, The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday.

Here are some books I listened to on Audible in the last year and a half, listing those that I enjoyed the most. Each of these books changed me in some ways, I never thought how much fun it is to listen to biographies and how many lessons there are.

0. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition

1. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

2. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

3. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

4. Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography

5. What Got You Here Won't Get You There

6. The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connection, and Courage

7. The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

8. The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over

9. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

10. Pre-Suasion: Channeling Attention for Change

11. Thinking, Fast and Slow

12. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

13. Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life

14. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

15. Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

16. Sapiens

17. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

18. If you like space: Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery

19. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

20. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

21. Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

22. The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations

I'm surprised by the lack of philosophy writings mentioned here.

I'm averse to sociopathic and manipulative teachings such as my book-by-its-cover judgement of "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and the like.

Instead, I began my journey several years ago reading through "Mindfulness in Plain English" by Guranatana. More recently I began frequenting the Farnam Street blog, being turned onto reading "The Obstacle is the Way," by Ryan Holiday, which lead me to "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius, and I'll be picking up "Letters from a Stoic" as soon as I'm done with "The Kingdom of God Is Within You" by Tolstoy (having never read Tolstoy's non-fiction writing previous to "A Letter to a Hindu," which was posted to Hacker News a few weeks ago).

I would say that the most powerful book I've read is Meditations. The perspective the book holds is that you are a person, and people are pre-wired to do good for society and for other people (as entities); that this is innate in you, and you MUST use this to do good. It is a book focused on resilience in the face of circumstances, people and things that people do that aren't good.

"Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn."

- Kafka on the Shore, Murakami

Under immensely troubling times - not as bad as war or famine, but much worse than a startup or relationship failure - these books kept me going:

  - The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday
  - Mastery by Robert Greene
  - Courage Under Fire by James B Stockdale
  - Gratitude by Oliver Sacks
  - Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

It feels like an older version of "sheeple".

In terms of modern Stoic writing, I find Ryan Holiday's "The Ego is The Enemy" and "The Obstacle is the Way" (as well as his "Daily Stoic", although that's more of a daily devotional) to be very enjoyable and help to reframe the often hard-to-read writings of Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus into actionable advice.

In no particular order:

* Siddhartha, Herman Hesse

* Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

* The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday

* The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday

* The Effective Engineer, Edmund Lau

* The Lean Startup, Eric Ries

* The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufman

* Certain to Win, Chet Richards

* Left of Bang, Patrick Van Horn & Jason A. Riley

* Native Set Theory, Paul R. Halmos

EDIT: list formatting

How to be a Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci (author of the article)

A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine

I also read The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday, which read too much like a self-help/business book to me. It might be to some people's tastes, but I found it lacked the substance of the two above. Ryan Holiday does have Daily Stoic email newsletter which is often interesting, though.

Edit: Also, the 2003 Hays translation of Meditations is a much more accessible version of the text. I wish it was still in print.

In no particular order:

* The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday

* The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday

* Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

* Siddhartha, Herman Hesse

* The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufman

* The Effective Engineer, Edmund Lau

* The Lean Startup, Eric Ries

* Certain to Win, Chet Richards

* Left of Bang, Patrick Van Horn & Jason A. Riley

* Native Set Theory, Paul R. Halmos

* Introducing Go, by Caleb Doxsey.

If you'd like to read what I think of these books, you can read my blog post about them here: http://aalhour.com/blog/2018/01/02/review-of-my-2017-reading...

1) Never Split the Difference

Really, this book changed how I view communication and negotiation forever. It will definitely impact your life positively.

2) The Lean Startup

A classic, but worth re-reading. Everytime I read the book, it leaves a greater imprint on how I think.

3) The Obstacle is the Way

How to turn obstacles into solutions. This book is a great treatise on Stoicism via examples. I read the book at the start of the year which to mentally set the right tone for the months to follow. The book "coaches" the reader in the basic tenets of the Stoic philosophy by drawing examples from history and sports, by the end of the book you are left with a more intuitive and practical understanding of Stoicism than an academic one.