- The Book Nerd
- Posts
- 11 Quick Takeaways From The Book ‘Do The Work’
Any entrepreneur or creative professional battles resistance. Resistance could be fear, self-doubt, ego, perfectionism, distractions, narcissism or ego.
Do The Work is a short and insightful read by Steven Pressfield.
Here’s what I learnt from the book…
Start before you’re ready.
Limit your research to three. 3 books. 3 articles. 3 research papers. Let your subconscious do some work. You can come back to research later if you feel stuck.
2. Stay Primitive. It is better to be primitive than to be sophisticated, and better to be stupid than to be smart.
Steven shares how his mentor Joe Allen said: “Steve, God made a single sheet of yellow foolscap exactly the right length to hold the outline of the entire novel.”
3. Don’t overthink. Don’t over-prepare. Outline it fast.
Discipline yourself to boil down your idea, your story, or your business to a single page. Three-Act Structure Break the blank sheet into three parts: beginning, middle and end.
4. Get your idea on paper. You can always tweak it later.
5. Start at the end.
If you’re writing a novel, solve the climax first. If you’re opening a restaurant, ask what you’d want diners to experience. If you have a problem getting to the end ask: “What is this about?” or “Why am I doing this?”
6. Suspend the inner critic. You’re not allowed to judge yourself. Follow the process of Act, Reflect. Act, Reflect. Never act and reflect at once. Reflect and ask what’s missing and add that later.
7. Forget rational thought. Play. Play like a child. 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.
8. Keep Working. Momentum is everything.
9. Ending is the most difficult part of the work. Resistance is strongest at the end.
“We’re poised at the brink of a creative breakthrough and we can’t stand it. The prospect of success looms. We freak. Why did we start this project? We must have been insane. Who encouraged us? We want to wring their necks. Where are they now? Why can’t they help us?”
10. Finishing the critical part of any project. If we can’t finish, all our work is for nothing. He says, “It takes balls of steel to ship”. When we ship we’re exposed. That’s why we’re afraid of it. When we ship we can fail. When we ship, we can be humiliated.
“When we ship, we open ourselves to the real world. Nothing is more empowering, because it plants us solidly on Planet Earth and gets us out of our self-devouring, navel-centred fantasies and self-delusions.”
11. Start (Again) Before You’re Ready.