I thought there'd be a lot more drama and action in this book than there was.

While there certainly was intrigue, I did find the pace slower than I expected, especially with Ryan Holiday re-iterating multiple times the ideas around conspiracies and what happens when people feel wronged/vengeful, rather than focusing on the details of the story.

The book's narrative does take an interesting turn into politics and aims to inspire people to take action during those times when they want to but feel they can do nothing about a certain situation — however, it fell short for me in being wholly inspiring.

It does succeed in being reflective though — causing you to think: is it ever right to seek revenge when you've been hurt? Is it right to destroy an individual or institution that you think is incredibly damaging or hurtful to a wide range of people? The word 'conspiracy' tends to be viewed as automatically 'bad', but Ryan forces his reader to question that. Ultimately, I remain unconvinced with Ryan's hypothesis that we need more conspiracies in the world than we currently do.

There were a handful of extracts that were motivating with regards to my work. Turns out there are quite a few similarities between running a startup and pulling together a conspiracy. 😏