ABAW: Do the Work by Steven Pressfield

Do the Work! Overcome Resistance and get our of your own way by Steven Pressfield

The Domino Project 2011 (free Amazon Kindle edition)

This is a short, motivational book that I picked up free during a pre-release promotion at Amazon. I have not read any of Pressfield’s other work, but I’ve wanted to get my hands on The War of Art, so I couldn’t pass up the chance to check out this one.

Pressfield wants you to just DO whatever it is you want to do: write a book, choreograph a dance, start a business, recover from an addiction, whatever. He recognizes that these things are all hard, and require creativity to imagine doing them and then to accomplish them. Using martial language, and the metaphor of a knight and dragon ready to do battle, Pressfield tells us exactly what to do.

Where butts need to be kicked, we shall kick them. Where kinder, gentler methods are called for, we’ll get out the kid gloves.

He spends much of the book explaining the Resistance—the stuff that stands in the way of completing our goals—and the best ways to slay the Resistance. The Resistance is a big deal. Pressfield’s tone comes off as hyperbolic sometimes, but he’s deadly serious about the way Resistance is a killer. Resistance kills our confidence, our drive, our time and passion to pursue our goals. So he says we can have no mercy with Resistance. He also helps us to identify our allies, the Assistance that is the opposite of Resistance in the universe. 

Our job is not to control our idea; our job is to figure out what our idea is (and wants to be)—and then bring it into being.

Pressfield uses personal examples of his own failures and breakthroughs, as well as famous works of literature and art to break down his instructions. He asks questions that help get us through the motivational issues and the structural issues to Do the Work.

Melville’s Moby Dick shows up over and over, particularly in the middle of the work, in the place where we hit the wall, where we crash hard and want to give up and walk away and watch reality TV: The Belly of the Beast. Pressfield does not abandon us in that Hell, but teaches us that the hell can be good, the crash can be good, that the problem is in us but it is not us, that the problem can be overcome and the result will be better because of living through the crash.

This book came along for me at exactly the right time. It helped get my butt back in the desk to organize the work that had become an albatross. 

Start before you’re ready.

Stay stupid. 

Trust the soup.

Swing for the seats.

Start now.

Comments

[Sarah]

I like it. Motivational books so, so often suck, but if it's a recommendation from you I'll read it!