The War of Art

Every time you resolve to get disciplined, what's the first thing you do?

My answer is embarrassing: buy something "useful." Stationery, books, a subscription to a learning app. Then I wait eagerly for the delivery, as if success will arrive in the same box. This book told me that move has a name: Resistance.

Pressfield has fought Resistance for most of his life. He wrote ad copy, drove trucks, worked in the oil fields, went through twenty-odd jobs, and spent close to thirty years writing before he published his first novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, which was later made into a film. This slim 2002 book is both his record of defeats and his battle manual.

Resistance can disguise itself as anything. Procrastination. A sudden urge to tidy your room. A hundred perfectly reasonable reasons why you're "not ready yet." My version: no mirror, so no qigong; no yoga mat, so no exercise. The sneakiest part is that a lot of these reasons are true. But Tolstoy had thirteen children and still wrote War and Peace.

The more something scares you, the more you need to do it. If something meant nothing to you, you wouldn't fear it. The strength of your Resistance is proportional to how much you love the thing. It's the boldest and most energizing claim in the book. I'd add one thing: use it as a compass, not a commandment. When you're scared, ask where the fear is coming from instead of running on instinct.

Amateurs wait for inspiration. Pros show up to work. Someone once asked Somerset Maugham whether he wrote on a schedule or only when inspiration struck. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he said. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp." Professionals don't confuse themselves with their work. A failure isn't a verdict on who they are. They're back at the desk the next day.

What we really fear isn't failure. It's success. This was the most counterintuitive part for me. We're afraid of finding out that we really do have the talent and the courage, because then there are no more excuses, and we'd have to leave everything familiar behind.

The book is short and reads like a gruff coach yelling in your ear. It isn't gentle. But every time I'm tempted to replace starting with waiting for a delivery, I think of it.

Read it if there's something you've been meaning to do "someday" and keep putting off.

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are.