Title | : | How to Fight a Hydra: Face Your Fears, Pursue Your Ambitions, and Become the Hero You Are Destined to Be |
Author | : | |
Rating | : | |
ISBN | : | - |
Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
Number of Pages | : | 127 |
Publication | : | First published October 23, 2018 |
You have a Hydra: a grand, ambitious project you’ve always wanted to tackle. It feels overwhelming, unconquerable. Chop off one of a Hydra’s heads, and two more grow in its place.
How will you ever defeat such a terrifying monstrosity – and live to tell the tale?
In this illuminating fable, productivity expert Josh Kaufman explores the uncertainty and fear inherent in facing down any ambitious challenge, from starting a new business to completing a work of art.
The risks involved can never be eliminated, but they can be understood, anticipated, and mitigated. Armed with an adventurer's insights into tackling unknown and fearsome challenges, you can tame a project of epic proportions.
How to Fight a Hydra is an essential handbook for artists, creative professionals, and entrepreneurs tired of ignoring the call to adventure.
So prepare for battle, brave soul. Draw your sword. Light your torch.
In the darkness ahead, your Hydra awaits.
How to Fight a Hydra: Face Your Fears, Pursue Your Ambitions, and Become the Hero You Are Destined to Be Reviews
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The real hydras are Josh Kaufman's books. Every time you finish reading one of his books, he tasks you with reading a bunch of other great books.
I'm still fighting "Personal MBA" hydra (97 book recommendations), "How to Fight a Hydra" gives another 7.
If I read one more book from Josh Kaufman, I'll have to get a bigger apartment just for my books. -
Nice and easily digestible.
My first thought upon seeing the title was that procrastination is the Hydra, but it wasn't just that.
A Hydra is what you'd have if you start thinking about ambitious, uncertain, and speculative projects as some kind of being instead of just an abstract challenge.
It strangely makes sense, and of course, it does. We, humans, understand things better in metaphors, just imagine living your life literally, it becomes unbearable. So taking the challenges we face outside of their literal sense is bound to make them conceive of them better, and act accordingly.
That idea is the core of this book, for me at least.
If you want to boost your productivity or have a slight change in perspective, give it a shot. -
A short and sweet book about the adventurer's lifestyle---about facing your fears and accomplishing great things. I read it in about half an hour, and it lands at exactly the right length. Invaluable advice for taking risks and achieving greatness.
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“The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day...”
~
Steven Pressfield, author of
The War of Art, veteran slayer of Hydras
How to Fight a Hydra was an decent short read.
Josh Kaufman is the bestselling author of books on business, entrepreneurship, skill acquisition, productivity, creativity, applied psychology, and practical wisdom. He opens the book with the quote above.
Josh Kaufman:
I wasn't sure what to make of this one going in. Kaufman drops this tongue-in-cheek blurb at the start:
"TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
I discovered the following manuscript several years ago among the dusty shelves of a Bucharest antiquities dealer. The pages exhibited substantial water damage, and the scaled-hide casework and binding were in terrible shape, suggesting prolonged exposure to the elements.
Given the subject matter, we are fortunate the book exists at all, and that it has survived to the present day.
The original text is in Aromanian, a language similar to Romanian but with notable Greek influences. The author’s name, age, gender, precise location, and date of writing is unknown, but the linguistic style and paper quality suggest a period between the late 11th to early 12th century CE.
I have updated the language and phrasing to make the text accessible to modern readers."
Reading this in the PDF version I had actually got me for a second... However, in the reading of the audiobook, the author puts on a very thick accent for this part, and I caught the humour he was laying down.
The formatting and overall presentation of this one is a bit unorthodox... I'm not sure I've read another book presented in this style. The entire book is a giant metaphor. It is written almost like a long poem; with the writing is segmented in very concise paragraphs. There was no room for idle banter here.
I wasn't initially a fan of this style of presentation at first, but I'll admit that it did grow on me as the book progressed. Kaufman has distilled the book's contents down to only its essential ingredients. It is all substance, with no fluff.
There were some decent quotes here. I'll drop a few below, so you can get an idea of Kaufman's style. Kaufman talks about confronting the hydra here:
"A battle with a Hydra is a battle with the most profound terror of human existence: the ambiguous, complex, uncertain, infinitely variable future.
Before you engage, you won’t know the outcome of the struggle. You may win the day easily, with barely a scratch. You may prevail, after much effort and after earning a few battle scars. You may fall, never to rise again.
There may be treasure in the back of the cave, enough to live on in splendor for the rest of your days. There may be nothing.
You may win glory and renown, or be considered a fool, worse off than you were before. This is the essence of life. The outcome of your actions and decisions is unknown and unknowable.
What separates the adventurer from the bulk of humanity is the willingness to fight in spite of the risks: to meet the enemy on the field of valor, trusting in skill, instinct, and determination to see them through to a good end.
There are no certainties and no guarantees. The hero fights anyway.
So rise, noble adventurer. Take up your sword and torch. Explore the wild, unknown corners of the world. Find hidden treasures and challenge the monstrosities that guard them. The world needs you.
And as you approach the Hydra, summoning every ounce of your strength, courage, and fortitude, remember one thing. The moment you lock eyes with the beast, steel your mind, and stand your ground, you earn yourself a place among the heroes of legend, who are honored, first and foremost, for overcoming their own fears. Fight well, brave soul. I wish you good fortune and every success."
He also includes this piece of valuable writing near the end:
"PREPARING FOR YOUR ADVENTURE
Keep in mind the following as you prepare to set forth on your own adventures:
1. Uncertainty, complexity, variability, and ambiguity are unavoidable parts of adventuring: you will not be able to guarantee victory in advance. You have to decide on a course of action, prepare as best you can, move forward, and hope for the best.
2. Some people will support your desire to adventure, and others will not. Do not let their doubts and concerns dissuade you if you've decided the experience, benefits, and potential rewards are worth the risks.
3. Every adventurer feels afraid, and has doubts about their ability. That's normal, not a sign of weakness or cowardice.
4. Every adventure requires a certain amount of exploration. You will spend time lost in the wilderness, uncertain about which way to go. You can't eliminate it: exploration is an unavoidable part of adventuring.
5. The struggle will always take longer, and feel more difficult, than you expect. Knowing it's going to be difficult makes it easier to keep going.
6. Stories are embellished to make the telling more interesting: they contain only the highlights, and omit extended periods of trepidation, anxiety, and toil. Take heart: every hero struggles with the same difficulties.
7. The path to victory: keep moving toward your objective, undeterred by hardship.
8. Sharpening your abilities and learning new skills are excellent uses of your time and energy.
9. Take care of your health: perseverance depends on your physical, mental, and emotional fortitude.
10. Experiment with different approaches until you find something that works.
11. Pay attention to your environment, and look for opportunities to put yourself in advantageous
circumstances.
12. Confidence is a potent ally: trust your experience, insight, and intuition. Beware the dangers of inattention, impatience, and hubris.
13. Often, the reward at the end of the journey is not what you expect. Be open to the possibility of finding treasure in unexpected places and in uncommon forms.
14. Weigh each new opportunity against your current objective, then decide what to do based on what you value most."
Kaufman also drops some book recommendations at the end of this one, for the reader looking to read more on the topic. He includes a brief description of the books covered, as well as their relevance to the topic at hand.
******************************
Despite being a bit puzzled by this book's strange format, I did end up enjoying it. Thankfully it was not too long, as I'm not sure how this format would have played out in an 8+ hour book.
I would recommend this one to anyone interested.
4 stars. -
U pogovoru knjige Džoš Kofman kaže da je čitavog života bio ljubitelj epske fantastike. To se u knjizi “Hidra” i te kako da videti jer je na jedan divan način kroz epsku fantastiku provukao popularnu psihologiju, na način tako pitak i fin da sam se zaista iznenadio kada sam je završio. Pregršt korisnih, primenljivih poruka, saveta i mudrosti ukomponovanih u avanturu glavnog junaka čine ovu “self-help” knjigu jednom od najinteresantnijih koje sam čitao do sada. Pomešajte neku knjigu iz žanra popularne psihologije sa temama “Alhemičara”, osećajem čitanja “Malog princa” i stavite sve to u seting “Hobita” i dobićete “Hidru”, koju bih preporučio svima kojima je potrebna reč ohrabrenja i motivacije. Jedina zamerka je pomalo nepotreban pogovor, obzirom da je metafora u samoj priči prilično očigledna, te nije bilo potrebe za dodatnim pojašnjavanjem onoga što je autor hteo da kaže.
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This book is the equivalent of a motivational keynote speech at a conference - quite interesting at the time, but ultimately useless and forgotten.
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"No matter who you are, what you do, or the resources you have at your disposal, you have to learn to live with uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, and fear of the unknown."
This was a 30 minutes read and well, it was totally worth the time.
The author uses a fantasy tale of a warrior who tries to tackle down hydra and takes us reader on the same adventure. This adventure is used to teach us all not just about essence of adventuring but the essence of life. How fearful it might be to see hurdles first in your life. How worrisome it is to think of plan to overcome them. How scary it actually is to try and overcome them all.
But while all this goes on we are often scared of what our future holds or what the final result will be. Ergo, the author says that "I cannot control the outcome of my quest. I can only control myself: how I prepare, how I manage my fears, and how I conduct myself in the battle to come."
The best takeaways were the following lines :-
•I will persist;
•I accept the risks;
•I will not trust my fate to unreliable tools;
•I must learn patience, maintain my resolve. -
An excellent little book full of gems! The author takes our fear of the unknown, uncertainty, ambiguity, and resistance and embodies them into the form of a hydra and us as an adventurer. I enjoyed the metaphor and found myself highlighting little pieces of wisdom throughout the book.
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This very short book is fun to read, with deep thoughts buried in it. The story was much better than I expected. And there isn't a ton of explaining the big ideas embedded in the story. You get them pretty clearly from the story so he doesn't repeat them. It's not very tactical, it's just motivational. But it's good at being motivational.
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Procrastination and anxiety are eternal human adversaries, that countless self-help/productivity books have been written on. Josh Kaufman gives physical form and names our greatest enemy as the hydra in this fable about conquering your fears and fulfilling your potential. Uncertainty, complexity, variability and ambiguity are hydras that every hero has to face in life. Every adventurer feels afraid, every adventurer needs to explore, every adventurer wants to quit at some point. But perseverance, preparation and a mind open to possibilities will take you a long way in facing down the hydra. Remember disproportionate risks give disproportionate rewards in this life.
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What an AMAZING book to complete my reading challenge with! This book is Phenomenal!! I have never in my life, felt more understood. This book just hit Sooooooo close to home for me because I am one of the "Adventurers", Entrepreneurs, and dream chasers this book is modeled after. I have read Josh Kaufman's other book; "The Personal MBA" and really really enjoyed that, I found it so helpful and supportive. So when I got an email that he had a new book out, I jumped on it! This book is a beautifully short, but extremely powerful fable about a young man going after his dreams despite what the people close to him say, and despite all the judgement and doubt of others. He goes on an epic fantasy journey to slay a Hydra, and we see through his eyes all the lessons and wisdom he learns and gives to the reader through beautifully written metaphors. This book speaks to your soul, through a high stakes fantasy story. Having all that wisdom and advice wrapped up in a fantasy story was everything I could ever want as a lover of fantasy books, and an avid reader of business and self-help books. I often feel that no one around me really understands my out of the box direction in life, and there were times that I actually teared up a bit, (which never happens to me), because of how much I related to the things that were happening and being talked about. Everyone should read this book!! Even if you aren't strictly an entrepreneur/adventurer type. It's perfect for anyone who has fears in the back of their heads, and feels like they are unsure about what they are doing. All I can say is this book is great, super entertaining, and meaningful. I wish I could have written it. <3
Reread January 2022:
I still love this book, and the valuable way it gives advice for aspiring creatives via a fun fantasy metaphor. Since I first read it in 2018, I have had some significant success in my creative endeavors. And because of that, I find that most of the lessons in this book I have already experienced first hand, and are now second nature thoughts in my head. This is an essential book for young or early in their career, creatives and aspiring entrepreneurs. This book helped me many times through some of my darkest days pursuing my quest, and it’s really amazing to see how much growth I now have all these years later because of it. -
Brilliant 30 minute Read!
A beautiful metaphor for the complexities we face in real life, and the inner battles that we must win , to make progress!
Excellent! Highlighted more than half the book! -
It was a great 1 hour reading. So many ideas are in such a small book. And they are expressed by a fantasy story. The story is used as a metaphor for delivering the ideas. It not that it's a different type of approach. Many authors use metaphor frequently for expressing ideas. But it's nicely oriented and neatly represented. I would prefer to call it a kind of book that gives you courage rather than motivation. Really a thought provoking one.
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It was such a well written book with divisions that made it easy to pick up and continue. It only took about an hour to read, but I was bookmarking throughout. I felt the lessons came fast and the story was authentic. While it's allegorical fiction, it's so well done that you lose yourself in the story. I highly recommend it.
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This a great and inspiring story for anyone trying to tackle anything that seems incredible hard or impossible. It's not always a good thing when authors want to read their own books imho, but in the case of Josh his voice is just great and is accompanied by sound effects and a background ambiance that makes this book a must for listening to as an audiobook.
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A really entertaining read full of great tips to be more productive, achieve your goals and of course how to defeat a hydra! It was so easy to read that I almost finished it in one sitting. I also really liked the annotated bibliography at the end which has given me a few more ideas for future books to read.
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Un libro bueno, pero no fuera de lo normal, supongo que depende en que etapa de tu vida te encuentres, para poder captar la idea principal de este libro, repito es bueno y tiene sentido cada una de sus hojas.
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A beautifully crafted metaphor for tackling real life projects. I highly recommend this.
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A refreshing perspective on journeying through life, it reminds us of the struggles that accompanies journeying.
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A great book about facing your fear told in very engaging story. A must read!
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Nice little metaphor about life and work. Audio version has excellent soundtrack, which pretty much sounds like it's pulled straight out of Warcraft 3 campaign.
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This is a very short book, with strong echoes of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It was entertaining and mildly inspiring.
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It is a book that I will return to often. Short but very eloquently written. Great lesson. Cant recommend it enough.
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Brilliant read!
A friend recommended this book to me and told me that the writing style reminded him of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist and I couldn't agree more. It was so engaging, I read it in one sitting and the lessons shared are very relevant today. I enjoyed the storytelling and the after-notes, and I look forward to reading more of Josh's works. -
Think campy Dungeons and Dragons session (with a mediocre plot and writing style) meets armchair motivational speaker. Don’t get me wrong, the author is deliberate in his campiness and openly admits this work is designed to be a simple and easy metaphor, but it could’ve been MUCH better. It was just downright boring.
That said, it was brief, and in the brief read I managed a few takeaways. There is much to be said about weighing out risks, making cautious preparations, walking the fine line between confidence, humility, and hubris…for example.
But, aside from the odd nugget of wisdom, the book as a whole was just…eh…mediocre. It could’ve been an awesome concept if he’d executed it properly. Bummer!
Edit: I re-read this with a friend who wanted something short and sweet, and it was available on my shelf. It was short, thankfully. Sweet? Meh. I feel the same about it now as I did when I wrote the review above. -
Have you ever wanted to pursue an ambitious project? 🙇♂️
Doing something new can feel overwhelming, uncomfortable, and impossible, much like trying to defeat a Hydra. 🐉
“How To Fight A Hydra” is a short book that tells the tale of a young man on a quest to defeat a deadly monster (hydra is a metaphor for a difficult task). As soon as you cut one head off (solve a problem) two more appear! ⚔️
This book is short (~100 pages), but has a deep message. It shares advice on facing your fears and pursuing your ambitions.
If you’re an artist, entrepreneur, or enjoyed “The War of Art” by Pressfield, you’ll like this book. -
Brilliant book. Its especially a good read if read at an appropriate time in ones career. I could relate with the book which made it an absolute pleasure read.