Above the Chaos ยท free eBook and workbook
You became the bottleneck because you’re too good at execution to let go. This is the operating system that gets you out of the firefighting and back to leading, calm under pressure, when everything depends on you.
Tools in this book are used by leaders at OpenAI, Qualcomm, Sony PlayStation, Heap, Sendlane, and Tealium.
Sound familiar?
The first Slack ping hits before coffee. A big customer might churn. By the time your cup is poured, nine more messages have landed and none of them can wait.
You raised the round. You shipped the product. By every metric a board cares about, you’re winning. So why does it feel like you’re holding the whole thing together with both hands while the ground keeps moving?
The company outgrew its infrastructure, and the infrastructure became you. You’re the routing layer, the escalation path, and the final say. You’re too good at it to let go.
You’ve run the playbooks. GTD, time-blocking, the 5am mornings, the cold plunges. They buy back a few hours and the water rises again, because the problem was never your calendar. The whole company routes through one person.
A bad day would almost be a relief, because a bad day ends. This is all day, every day. You can out-grind it for a while. You cannot out-grind it forever.
There is a system for this. It starts with the free eBook and workbook.
What’s inside
The book follows three founders through a coaching cohort as each one works out of the bottleneck. Most readers see themselves in at least one of them. Around their stories, it lays out a complete Stoic Leadership Operating System built on eight principles:
You won’t change anything by reading. The change happens when you put it on paper. The 64-page workbook lays out all nine exercises one step per page, with room to work each one by hand. It’s the same set of exercises I run with founders in coaching.
Get the book
Most founders pay for the paperback. You can read the same book today for an email, and the workbook comes with it. Both arrive in about two minutes. You can run the first exercise tonight.
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Reader reviews
“I run an accelerator where I’ve advised and coached hundreds of founders. Moving forward, this is the book on pressure I want to hand to every one of them.”
D_ShA Stoic operating system for founders“Most Stoicism books teach the philosophy but leave you to figure out how to apply it. Above the Chaos does the translation for you.”
Matthew McCordStoicism as a practical operating system for founders“If you’re a founder who is doing it all, on the verge of burnout, or already there, Above the Chaos was written for you.”
Natalie PostonA lifeline when you need it most as a founder“Eric’s book is the most targeted and actionable take on Stoic philosophy I’ve read, and I’m pretty familiar with this area of literature because it has shaped my life considerably.”
Wesley ColbathMarvelous distillation of Stoic philosophy for young founders“If you lead a team and feel fried all the time, get this book. Easy read, super practical, and it made me realize how much stuff I’d been carrying.”
Amazon CustomerMust read for anyone dealing with burnout“What sets this book apart is its emphasis on practice. It doesn’t simply explain Stoic philosophy and leave the reader to figure out what to do with it.”
S.S.Practical Stoic wisdom you can put to work
About the author
I’m Eric Weiss, a former founder and CTO who built the PlayStation Network. I spent nearly three years inside OpenAI helping operationalize GPT-3 during its rapid expansion, and I’ve coached more than 75 technical founders and teams, including Heap, Sendlane, Tealium, and Sempre Health.
Above the Chaos grew out of my own worst year and the decade of coaching that followed. I wrote it because I can’t sit across from every founder who needs the conversation. What the book can’t do is tell you which mistake you’re making right now. That part still takes a conversation.