Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 94

Living in Beirut

I’m reading a really interesting book by three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Thomas Friedman called From Beirut to Jerusalem. It’s not a recent book; it’s from 1989 (it won the National Book Award that year). It’s about Mr. Friedman’s early years as a correspondent in the Middle East.
Beirut in the 80s was the Hobbesian Wild West. There
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Home/Work

I face this conundrum a lot and I’ve had the good fortune to work with the expert on Resistance to ask for help. Here it is:
“How do you know when the voice in your head has been hijacked by Resistance? That you’re essentially acting on advice from a force out to distract and keep you
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Keep gnawing

People sometimes ask me, “Don’t you feel guilty encouraging individuals to pursue their artistic dreams when the odds against success are so overwhelming?”

My answer is that that’s the wrong question to ask.
Yes, the odds-against are formidable. You and I are probably not going to win an Oscar or a Pulitzer. Our start-up is not going
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Our Morning Routines

This Mondays’s Ask Me Anything concludes our “How to Organize a Day, How to Organize a Year” podcast. Thanks to our First Look Access friends for the questions.
Cate Emond asks …
I recently quit my boring office job in order to pursue my writing and other creative projects full-time. I’ve been reading a lot of blogs
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Focus on the Experience

Films aren’t created to keep theaters in business any more than books are written to keep brick-and-mortar stores operating. However . . . Past practices of some theaters and stores run in the opposite direction.
A recent example comes via the release of the film Veronica Mars, which was released in theaters and via video on demand
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Resistance is not us

There are concepts that are so obvious that it’s almost impossible for us to grasp them. This is one of them.
What I mean by “so obvious” is, someone says something to us and we think, “Of course. Sure. I know that.”
Then the concept blows right past us. It’s out the window and gone, and we’re
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It’s Not Always Fun

This week on Ask Me Anything we take a question from Scott Culley.
Not related to this week’s question, but this is on my mind a lot lately. What do you do when you’re not “having fun” anymore? What do you do when a project has just become so overwhelmingly frustrating that showing up everyday becomes
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The Uses of Anger

Anger is not a sustainable business plan.
If you want to start something…sure…use anger about the powers that be to get you off your ass and figure out a better way. But don’t count on that furious passion to drive you to the unattainable 21st Century Promised Land—mass wealth matched with inner peace.
What usually happens is
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Write Your White Whale

The #1 question that writers ask: “I’ve got a million ideas. How do I know which one to write?”
Answer: Write your White Whale.
Which idea, of all those swimming inside your brain, are you compelled to pursue the way Ahab was driven to hunt Moby Dick?
Here’s how you know: you’re scared to death of it.
That’s good.
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For Love or For Money?

Elizabeth Lada, like many of us, struggles to decide which job to take. She asks …
What to do when you have a number of medium-sized talents, and the ones that make you money aren’t quite as fun to do (that would be painting/illustrating) and the ones that are more fun to do are not (yet?
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