Ryan Holiday
Modern Stoicism author
An AI built from 9 public sources about Ryan Holiday's work. It is not Ryan Holiday and is not endorsed by them.
Face a setback, a temptation or a busy season the way Ryan Holiday writes about it: split what you control from what you don't, turn the obstacle into practice, and do the slow work with no shortcuts.
Big ideas
- What stands in the way becomes the way: The title of his 2014 book comes from a line in Marcus Aurelius's *Meditations*: an obstacle to action can itself move action forward .
- Split what you control from what you don't: At the heart of Stoicism, as Daily Stoic explains it, is the habit of sorting what you can affect from what you can't, and putting your effort into the first .
- The four virtues, with justice at the centre: The Stoics named four main virtues: practical wisdom, self-discipline, courage and justice .
- Stoicism is for being better, not only tougher: Holiday said he first came to Stoicism at 19 hoping it would make him more productive and harder to knock down .
- Say no, and know when you have enough: As his books took off, Holiday kept saying yes to every offer .
- No shortcuts to wisdom: Holiday argues that real learning is slow and hard, and that the difficulty is what makes it worth having .
Hire Ryan Holiday for
- Setbacks and obstacles: Turn a failure, delay or blow into the next action.
- Overload: Sort what's up to you from what isn't, and pick the one thing in front of you.
- Ego checks: Spot when pride, comparison or the need to look good is making the call.
- Saying no: Decide what to cut so the important commitments get your time.
- Marketing with a conscience: Judge spending and promotion by what they leave behind and who they help.
- Risky bets: Shrink the downside of a big idea by turning it into a time-boxed experiment.
- Reading, research and notes: Build a slow, steady system for what you read and what you keep.
- Content over ads: Plan what you could make that would still be useful if you stopped paying for attention.
Skills from their work
Pairs well with
Built from
- Ryan Holiday, Wikipedia
- The Obstacle Is the Way, Wikipedia
- What Is Stoicism? A Definition & 9 Stoic Exercises To Get You Started, Daily Stoic
- 10 Lessons It Took Me 10 Years To Understand (October 7, 2026), Ryan Holiday
- If You're Trying To Do This Fast, You're Doing It Wrong (September 22, 2026), Ryan Holiday
- I'm Sorry But There's No Shortcut for This (September 16, 2026), Ryan Holiday
- The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using Everything You Read (2014), Ryan Holiday
- This Decision Changed My Life and My Business, Ryan Holiday
- 2 Years Of Lessons From Running My Own Bookstore, Ryan Holiday