Ryan Daniel Moran reviews Benjamin Hardy's Willpower Doesn't Work from Bucharest, connecting it to his own pattern of burning out every three and a half years. Hardy's core idea: design your environment and turn off your phone instead of relying on willpower. Moran argues this makes creativity and productivity feel easy rather than forced.
Three and a half years.
Hey guys. Ryan here. I'm in Bucharest, Romania and I'm reading a book that is one of the better ones, probably my favorite book of the quarter that I want to share with you. But first of all, we're in downtown Romania, another corner here. And what I really, really find interesting about this city is that you've got all these buildings that are from.
Soviet rule, which is really interesting because this is the first generation of young people who entrepreneurial aspirations because everybody's been in communism for the previous generation. And it's just really interesting to see the people here and the experiences here because they're so hungry and passionate and excited to learn about entrepreneurship. They're so driven to make the world or to make their world better and to pursue opportunities. It's a hustle that I'm afraid that we've lost in the U.S. which is why, by the way, I bought the word capitalism on the Internet because I wanted to defend the idea that is spreading here. And you can feel the difference that capitalism makes here in Romania versus I think the tendency to go more socialist and communist in the United States. Hopefully.
That doesn't continue. And while I've been here, I've been reading this book and I've been really jazzed by it because where I am in my life is I've needed a reset of habits, I've needed a reset of mindset. I needed a reset to get kind of back on track and progress because in my life I tend to go in cycles, I tend to go in three and a half year cycles, I grow for three and a half years and then I kind of peak. I either exit or something fails or breaks and then I go through a period where I'm in self discovery and I'm in self discovery right now. Where I built multimillion dollar businesses, I sold them.
And now I tried some new things and I'm find my next steps. What's up dude? And so I discovered the book Willpower Doesn't Work by Benjamin Hardy. What I like about it is a couple things. It feels like a really nice blend of the slight edge and the one thing, which are two of my top five favorite books, which by the way, if you want all five, just head over to freedomfastlane.com we've got them listed. But I love those two books because they're about long term habits with short term execution. And Willpower Doesn't Work is about creating the environment that makes those things possible and effortless and easy. So.
Some of the takeaways I've had from it in terms of action items is one just making the habit and making the priority of space. He calls it sacred space. Coming home and turning off the phone and decompressing once a month, going away and relaxing.
I'm a hustler. I grind, I work myself sometimes, sometimes to death seat, sometimes, sometimes to death. And as a result, I burn out. And if I were to follow the structure that he lays out and willpower doesn't work, I'd be able to maintain.
There's a lot of people here I know, I'd be able to maintain that ease at which really great work is possible. So what I realized is when I'm at a reset at this period of my life, my temptation is to hurry up and force it. And what this book has reminded me to do is that I need to take a step back and get into that place where I'm super creative. And that's when things are easy. It's easy to work out when you're super jazzed and relaxed and energized at the same time. And it's also really easy to be creative when you're in that zone. It's easy to be productive when you're in that zone. And so my job as an entrepreneur is to stay in that place.
The next thing that I got out of this book was the replacement of habits. So we often want to start a new thing or stop doing something else. And what this book suggests is replacing it with a new and slightly different habit. So for example, I know that when I wake up in the morning, I check my phone. The whole day is ruined. So instead of doing that, he suggests doing these microhabits, which are instead of if I feel tempted to grab my phone when I wake up in the morning, Instead I'll do 20 pushups, which is just enough of a reset to be able to break that habit, which I really, really appreciated and enjoyed. So this is my favorite book of the quarter because it's such a summary of all of the ideas that I believe to be so true. The idea that you are who you are surrounded by, you are what you compare yourself to. That our daily habits create long term compounding effects, that when you're at a plateau, you need a person, you know, breakthrough, you need to meet someone and that you should in order to be truly productive, you have to reduce it down to its core first step. And that opens up everything else rather than doing everything at once. And this was just a beautiful reminder and summary of all that into an action plan that I really needed at this point in my life, so I would recommend Willpower doesn't work. It's a quick read. I'd recommend the physical version, not the audio version, because it's a really quick read. You can get through it in a couple hours on a few bus rides or subway rides or plane rides like I did. So send me a message on Twitter or Instagram if you liked it. I'm ryandaniel Moran, but I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
