Do the Work

by Steven Pressfield

On the field of the Self stand a knight and a dragon. You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon.

We’ll hit every predictable Resistance Point along the way—those junctures where fear, self-sabotage, procrastination, self-doubt, and all those other demons we’re all so familiar with can be counted upon to strike.

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

Our Enemies The following is a list of the forces arrayed against us as artists and entrepreneurs: Resistance (i.e., fear, self-doubt, procrastination, addiction, distraction, timidity, ego and narcissism, self-loathing, perfectionism, etc.) Rational thought Friends and family

The following is a list, in no particular order, of those activities that most commonly elicit Resistance: The pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance, or any creative art, however marginal or unconventional. The launching of any entrepreneurial venture or enterprise, for profit or otherwise. Any diet or health regimen.

In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower. Any of these acts will elicit Resistance.

Resistance Is Invisible Resistance cannot be seen, heard, touched, or smelled. But it can be felt.

Resistance is a repelling force. It’s negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.

Resistance has no conscience. It will pledge anything to get a deal, then double-cross you as soon as your back is turned. If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get. Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.

Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

Resistance Never Sleeps Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five. In other words, fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.

Rational Thought Next to Resistance, rational thought is the artist or entrepreneur’s worst enemy. Bad things happen when we employ rational thought, because rational thought comes from the ego. Instead, we want to work from the Self, that is, from instinct and intuition, from the unconscious.

Homer began both The Iliad and The Odyssey with a prayer to the Muse. The Greeks’ greatest poet understood that genius did not reside within his fallible, mortal self—but came to him instead from some source that he could neither command nor control, only invoke. When an artist says “Trust the soup,” she means let go of the need to control (which we can’t do anyway) and put your faith instead in the Source, the Mystery, the Quantum Soup. The deeper the source we work from, the better our stuff will be—and the more transformative it will be for us and for those we share it with.

Friends and Family The problem with friends and family is that they know us as we are. They are investe...

Prepare yourself to make new friends. They will appear, trust me.

Our Allies Enough for now about the antagonists arrayed against us. Let’s consider the champions on our side: Stupidity Stubbornness Blind faith Passion Assistance (the opposite of Resistance) Friends and family

Stay Stupid The three dumbest guys I can think of: Charles Lindbergh, Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill. Why? Because any smart person who understood how impossibly arduous were the tasks they had set themselves would have pulled the plug before he even began.

Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be—and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway.

How do we achieve this state of mind? By staying stupid. By not allowing ourselves to think. A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains...

Don’t think. Act. We can always revise and revisit once we’ve acted. But we can accomp...

Be Stubborn Once we commit to action, the worst thing we ...

Resistance is the shadow, its opposite—Assistance—is the sun.

Only two things will remain with us across the river: our inhering genius and the hearts we love. In other words, what we do and whom we do it for.

Start Before You’re Ready Don’t prepare. Begin.

Remember, our enemy is not lack of preparation; it’s not the difficulty of the project or the state of the marketplace or the emptiness of our bank account. The enemy is Resistance. The enemy is our chattering brain, which, if we give it so much as a nanosecond, will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications, and a million reasons why we can’t/shouldn’t/won’t do what we know we need to do.

Start before you’...

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Begin it now.

A Research Diet Before we begin, you wanna do research? Uh-unh. I’m putting you on a diet. You’re allowed to read three books on your subject. No more.

No underlining, no highlighting, no thinking or talking about the documents later. Let the ideas percolate. Let the unconscious do its work.

Research can become Resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work. (Later we’ll come back and do serious, heav...

Three-Act Structure Break the sheet of foolscap into three parts: beginning, middle, and end. This is how screenwriters and playwrights work. Act One, Act Two, Act Three.

The old saw says there’s no such thing as writing, only rewriting. This is true.

Get your idea down on paper. You can always tweak it later.

Figure out where you want to go; then work backwards from there.

We can never eliminate Resistance. It will never go away. But we can outsmart it, and we can enlist allies that are as powerful as it is. One thing we can never, never permit ourselves to do is to take Resistance lightly, to underestimate it or to fail to take it into account.

Do Research Now Now you can do your research. But stay on your diet. Do research early or late. Don’t stop working. Never do research in prime working time.

Research can be fun. It can be seductive. That’s its danger. We need it, we love it. But we must never forget that research can become Resistance.

Any project or enterprise can be broken down into beginning, middle, and end. Fill in the gaps; then fill in the gaps between the gaps.

Cover the Canvas One rule for first full working drafts: get them done ASAP. Don’t worry about quality. Act, don’t reflect. Momentum is everything.

Get to THE END as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork. Believe me, he is.

Get the first version of your project done from A to Z as fast as you can.

Don’t stop. Don’t look down. Don’t think. Suspend All Self-Judgment

The inner critic? His ass is not permitted in the building.

Only one thing matters in this initial draft: get SOMETHING done, however flawed or imperfect. You are not allowed to judge yourself.

Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional, crazy heart. If your notion violates every precept I’ve set forth in these pages, tell me to go to hell. Do what that voice says.

Ideas come according to their own logic. That logic is not rational. It’s not linear. We may get the middle before we get the end. We may get the end before we get the beginning. Be ready for this. Don’t resist it.

Do you have a pocket tape recorder? I do. I keep it with me everywhere. (A notepad works, too.) Why do I record ideas the minute they come to me? Because if I don’t, I’ll forget them. You will, too.

Nothing is more fun than turning on the recorder and hearing your own voice telling you a fantastic idea that you ...

The Process Let’s talk about the actual process—the writing/composing/ idea generation process. It progresses in two stages: action and reflection. Act, reflect. Act, reflect. NEVER act and reflect at the same time. The Definition of Action and Reflection In writing, “action” means putting words on paper. “Reflection” means evaluating what...

Launch into the void and soar wherever the wind takes you. When we say “Trust the soup,” we mean the Muse, the unconscious, the Quantum Soup. The sailor hoists his canvas, trusting that the wind (which is invisible and which he can neither see nor control) will appear a...