Ryan Holiday

But when you take any sort of performer and they're like, I don't like to listen to what I do or I don't like to watch what I do, that I understand.

That's like this weird, uncomfortable thing.

To me, though, the more dangerous thing is if you love the sound of the applause.

whether you like to watch your work or not, is secondary to, I think, a more insidious form of ego narcissism, which is like you're sitting in the audience and you're just like soaking up the adoration, like, look how great I am.

So for me, it's not that I'm like done with the book because it's out.

It's more like I tried to take all my winnings off the table before it came out.

in that I enjoyed working on it, and I think I did my best work, and I think I said what I wanted to say.

And then I think I did everything that I can do from a marketing and promotion standpoint, which is important too.

I'm not just some pure creative who's just, well, I hope it comes out.

I obviously...

I'm doing a podcast right now with you.

I care about telling people about it and I want them to read it.

I think I've just learned that it's not healthy to spend, this is the culmination of six years of work for me, that I'm going to spend six years working on this series and then somebody who got a free copy of

from the publisher Amazon write some shitty review missing the entire point of the book and that's the first thing that pops up the day it comes out and because I'm frantically refreshing

The whole experience is now tainted in some way.

And I've had that experience before.

Sure.

Because I was setting myself up to be exposed to it.

And I just decided, hey, like, this is not the best use.

And then the weird quirk of publishing, I guess this is most art.