Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 4

Frank Sinatra Does Not Move Pianos

This story (and the principle behind it) comes from my entrepreneur guru, Dan Sullivan. Thank you, Dan!

When Dan was in the army, his job was to book talent to entertain the troops. One of the singers he contracted was Frank Sinatra. Dan watched Frank work for several days. His big takeaway:

Frank Sinatra does not move pianos.

Frank does two things and two things only: he sings and he prepares to sing.

Dan applies this principle today to his coaching of high-end entrepreneurs, but it applies equally to you and me as writers and artists, meaning …

Concentrate on the one thing you do best and delegate everything else.

My own big realization about myself from getting burned out in the California wildfires: I’ve been living the Frank Sinatra life. I write and I prepare to write.

I’m not worth a damn at moving pianos.

This is not good, since now all I have to do is move pianos.

The weird part, when I think about the notes and emails I get from my fellow writers and artists, is that often they are GREAT at moving pianos … but they experience trouble when they try to sing and prepare to sing.

Do I have a solution? No. Do I even have a suggestion? Maybe.

I’m trying to switch my own brain into piano moving mode, at least for 50% of my day.

Maybe for all of us when we have trouble sitting down to our writing or our art … we should switch into Frank Sinatra mode, even if it’s only for one hour.

We don’t move pianos. We sing and we prepare to sing.

The post Frank Sinatra Does Not Move Pianos first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

On Becoming More of a Prick

When Gates of Fire was first optioned by Universal Studios in 1998, the director Michael Mann was attached. I sent him hand-written congratulations and a signed first edition. I never heard a peep. I thought, “What a prick!”

The all-time champ, Ming the Merciless

The same thing happened with Robert Redford on The Legend of Bagger Vance. Again I thought, “What a prick!”

But I gotta tell you, the more I’ve thought about it over the years, the more I see both Mann and Redford’s point of view.

They have to protect their time. Their assistants have to keep “asks” and potential “asks” at bay. Surely both directors thought, if in fact they ever got my packages, “Uh-oh, this writer’s going to be a major pain in the ass; the last thing I need on the set is some hyper-possessive literary type peering over my shoulder saying, ‘I would’ve shot that scene differently.’”

(Whether a movie director should meet with the writer of a book he’s adapting is a whole other question. Don’t get me started on that one.)

The bottom line on saying no to “asks” is this: if it’s okay to ask (and it is), then it’s okay to blow off an ask.

We’re not being pricks; we’re protecting our time.

The post On Becoming More of a Prick first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

Chuck D. Tells It Like It Is

Here is Charles Dickens, rejecting an invitation from a friend.

“‘It is only half an hour’–’It is only an afternoon’–’It is only an evening,’ people say to me over and over again; but they don’t know that it is impossible to command one’s self sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes–or that the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometime worry a whole day…

Who ever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and to find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can’t help it; I must go in my way whether or no.”

Amen, brother.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The post Chuck D. Tells It Like It Is first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

How the Big Boys Say No

Thank you, Tim Ferriss, from whose blog the excerpts below come from, and even bigger thanks to Kevin Ashton for writing it in the first place.

Here’s the piece:

A Hungarian psychology professor once wrote to famous creators asking them to be interviewed for a book he was writing. One of the most interesting things about his project was how many people said “no.”

Management writer Peter Drucker:

“One of the secrets of productivity (in which I believe whereas I do not believe in creativity) is to have a VERY BIG waste paper basket to take care of ALL invitations such as yours. Productivity in my experience consists of NOT doing anything that helps the work of other people but to spend all one’s time on the work the Good Lord has fitted one to do, and to do well.”

Secretary to novelist Saul Bellow:

“Mr. Bellow informed me that he remains creative in the second half of life, at least in part, because he does not allow himself to be a part of other people’s ‘studies.’”

Photographer Richard Avedon:

“Sorry–too little time left.”

Secretary to composer György Ligeti:

“He is creative and, because of this, totally overworked. Therefore, the very reason you wish to study his creative process is also the reason why he (unfortunately) does not have time to help you in this study. He would also like to add that he cannot answer your letter personally because he is trying desperately to finish a Violin Concerto which will be premiered in the Fall…”

The post How the Big Boys Say No first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

No More Mister Nice Guy

I just came back from vacation and I’m about to plunge in on a Big New Project.

My first note to myself is:

START SAYING NO

I hereby vow to stop saying yes to things.

First, I’ll stop saying yes to things I want to do. My friend Jake, who has tickets to Springsteen? Pass. Sorry, pard.

I’ll go to Lou and Rachel’s wedding. I’ll be there for the festivities after. But I can’t stay out all night, and I won’t do anything that’ll leave me in no shape to work the next morning.

People are gonna get pissed off at me.

I’m sorry.

I’m like the Blues Brothers.

I’m on a mission.

Next I’ll start saying no to deserving invitations. Yeah, I could meet that Australian novelist coming into town, or do a favor for my friend Jeanie’s nephew. But if I say yes to them, I’m saying no to the thing that’s most important to me.

I know what it feels like, at the end of the day, when I’ve said yes to some bogus “opportunity” because I thought I ought to, or I didn’t want to offend someone, or because it seemed like what a Nice Guy would do.

I know what it feels like, at the end of the day, when I haven’t done my work—or slighted the Muse by doing it in some rushed or muddled manner.

I don’t want to feel like that.

I’m on a mission.

I have laid out a block of time, and in that time I have aims I want to achieve.

So things that I might have said yes to last month, I’ll say no to now.

The goal is to build a focus, to establish traction, to work not like an amateur but like a professional.

No more Mister Nice Guy.

The post No More Mister Nice Guy first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

An Ask Too Far

We said earlier that the playing field for the artist or entrepreneur is not level. Obstacles, often in the form of people seeking their own ends at your expense, are everywhere.

Can you defend your time to work?

Can you teach yourself to say no?

There are people out there who are what I call social sociopaths. They’re not actual murderers or criminals but, for whatever reasons of character or upbringing, they are utterly without empathy. They have no sense of the value of another person’s time or hard-won skill or painfully-earned reputation.

If you’ve got something and they can use it, they want it. They want it now. They want it free. And they want it again and again.

Three days ago I got an e-mail from a guy asking me for thirty free copies of The War of Art. There’s another person who, because of a colleague-in-common, I’ve said a courteous no to more than once. He doesn’t stop. Each ask is followed by another ask. The most recent was an ask to read his book. “It won’t be a problem,” he assured me. “It’ll only take three hours.”

Three hours?

When you respond to an ask from one of these sociopaths, don’t expect gratitude. Instead the initial ask is succeeded by a follow-up ask, and if you’re dumb enough to respond to that, a third ask will appear hot on its heels. Another guy contacted me out of the blue; I did a long interview for him, wrote a foreword for his book and turned him on to my agent. Finally he started asking for favors for his friends.

This was an ask too far. When I said no, he wrote back: “I always knew you were a Hollywood asshole.”

Dude! I don’t live anywhere near Hollywood.

The post An Ask Too Far first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

Resistance Always Lies

Here’s another way we can use our own Resistance, jiu-jitsu style, and turn it in our favor.

Remember, Resistance is always lying. Every statement it presents to us (I’m talking about the voice we hear in our heads) is the diametric opposite of truth.

If we hear, “You’re not good enough to write this book (or make this movie or start this business),” it’s almost dead-certain that we are.

This principle applies to ALL FIELDS, including those far apart from the arts.

If the voice of our Resistance tells us as we’re signing up for the marathon or the Spartan Race, “You’re not an athlete! Who are you kidding, thinking you can do anything except embarrass yourself?” … it’s almost a lock that we ARE an athlete (or can train ourself to become one.)

Spies and intelligence agents are taught three rules if they’re captured by an enemy:

Admit nothing.Deny everything.Counter-accuse.

That’s Resistance’s playbook too. It loves to counter-accuse, i.e. tell us the exact opposite of what’s true.

“You’re not a filmmaker.”

“You have no talent.”

“You can’t stay the course.”

The voice of Resistance in our heads will single out our hidden or as-yet-unrealized strengths and present the opposite as if it were true. It will tell us we’re weak, we’re ungifted, we don’t dare tackle the dreams we feel inside ourselves.

Dismiss this.

Remember: Resistance is ALWAYS lying and always full of shit.

The post Resistance Always Lies first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

How I Look At Self-Doubt

When I start a new project, I’m invariably crippled with self-doubt.

“Steve, this is a dumb idea. Steve, you’re not good enough to pull this off. Steve, this has been done a million times, blah blah etc.”

This self-doubt stays with me for months. I mean six months, nine months, a year.

This has happened to me on so many projects that I now say to myself, “If I’m NOT experiencing overwhelming self-doubt, something is wrong.”

In other words, I’ve come to consider self-doubt a good sign.

Why? Because self-doubt is one of the weapons Resistance uses against us.

Resistance is trying to undermine our faith in ourselves and our belief in the material.

Therefore, I tell myself, the more self-doubt I’m feeling, the more certain I can be that I’m onto something good.

If I weren’t, Resistance wouldn’t be trying so hard to derail me.

How to overcome self-doubt? We can’t reason or argue our way out of it. Resistance is too diabolical. It will present us with doubt after doubt until it overwhelms us.

The only way is to DISMISS it. “I see you, buddy. You are full of shit and I won’t listen to a word you say.”

Take self-doubt as GOOD and keep on rolling.

The post How I Look At Self-Doubt first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

Gotta Do It

Continuing our discussion on Resistance “coming second,” i.e. only in response to (and reaction against) a creative Dream … let’s consider what it means when we find ourselves experiencing MASSIVE RESISTANCE to a project we have in mind.

Remember we employed a visual to help us understand this. We said that the Dream is like a tree in the middle of a sunny meadow. The tree casts a shadow.

The tree is our Dream.

The shadow is the Resistance we feel to pursuing it.

The shadow is directly proportional to the size of the tree. Big tree = big shadow.

The scale of our Resistance is directly proportional to the size of our Dream. Big dream = big Resistance.

Which leads us to a third principle of the creative struggle:

The more Resistance we feel to tackling a particular project, the more certain we can be that we HAVE TO DO IT.

An actress trying to choose between two roles will often say, “I picked Role B because it was the one I was most afraid of. It was the one that I knew would challenge me and make me stretch and grow.”

In other words, we can use our own Resistance as a way of guiding us through difficult times and decisions.

Little tree = little shadow.

Little dream = little Resistance.

Big tree = big shadow.

Big Dream = big Resistance.

Go for the one that scares us the most, the one that’s hitting us with the most intense Resistance. That’s the Right One. That’s the one we should pick.

The post Gotta Do It first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

Equal and Opposite

We spoke last week about Resistance “coming second.”

We said that self-doubt/fear/procrastination/distraction/perfectionism etc. only arise in response to (and reaction against) a DREAM, i.e., the book we dream of writing, the podcast we want to start, the creative enterprise we dream of initiating.

There’s a corollary to this truth:

The degree of Resistance we feel will be EQUAL AND OPPOSITE to the power and importance of our dream.

Little dream = little Resistance.

Big dream = big Resistance.

The visual we cited last week was a tree in the middle of a sunny meadow. The tree (our Dream) inevitably casts a shadow (the fear/self-doubt etc. we feel to pursuing that dream.)

The bigger the tree, the bigger the shadow.

How does it help us to understand this? Because when we find ourselves feeling MASSIVE RESISTANCE to some creative project, we can be certain that that project is VERY IMPORTANT to us and to the evolution of our soul.

Big Resistance = Big Dream.

In other words, the worse we feel … the better.

Resistance senses that our Dream is important, that it’s critical to our development … so it marshals all its dark resources to stop us from pursuing it.

We can use that to encourage ourselves. The bigger the shadow, the bigger the Dream.

The post Equal and Opposite first appeared on Steven Pressfield.