Do the Work

by Steven Pressfield

You wanted a level playing field, one where you have just as good a shot as anyone else? Here it is. Do the work. That’s what we’re all waiting for you to do—to do the work.

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

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.

Don’t think. Act. We can always revise and revisit once we’ve acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act.

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

If we don’t swing for the seats from the start, we’ll never be able to drive a fastball into the upper deck.

Steve, God made a single sheet of yellow foolscap exactly the right length to hold the outline of an entire novel.

Do you love your idea? Does it feel right on instinct? Are you willing to bleed for it?

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

Better to have written a lousy ballet than to have composed no ballet at all.

Do research early or late. Don’t stop working. Never do research in prime working time.

Unless you’re building a sailboat or the Taj Mahal, I give you a free pass to screw up as much as you like.

We’re weeks into the project now. Good things are happening. We’ve established habit and rhythm. We’ve achieved momentum. Ideas are flowing. Our movie, our new business, our passage to freedom from addiction has acquired gravitational mass; it possesses energy; its field produces attraction. The law of self-ordering has kicked in. Despite all our self-doubt, the project is rounding into shape. It’s becoming itself. People are responding to us differently. We’re making new friends. Our feet are under us; we’re starting to feel professional. We’re beginning to feel as if we know a secret that nobody else does. Or rather, that we’ve somehow become part of a select society. Other members recognize us and encourage us; unsolicited, they proffer assistance—and their aid, unfailingly, is exactly what we’ve needed.

This is your trial by fire.

You can board a spaceship to Pluto and settle, all by yourself, into a perfect artist’s cottage ten zillion miles from Earth. Resistance will still be with you.

What does that mean? It means you are not to blame for the voices of Resistance you hear in your head. They are not your “fault.” You have done nothing “wrong.” You have committed no “sin.” I have that same voice in my head. So did Picasso and Einstein. So do Sarah Palin and Lady Gaga and Donald Trump. If you’ve got a head, you’ve got a voice of Resistance inside it. The enemy is in you, but it is not you. No moral judgment attaches to the possession of it. You “have” Resistance the same way you “have” a heartbeat. You are blameless. You retain free will and the capacity to act.

The opposite of fear is love—love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.

Panic is good. It’s a sign that we’re growing.