Pages

May 5, 2011

Do the Work

I think this week's book review is fitting, following last week's post about Evernote. Sometimes when you have ideas or goals about what you want to accomplish, it's hard to know where to start. Having thoughts about writing a book, or starting a business or something similar, can be difficult because it's a big goal and there's no roadmap. Most of the thoughts or ideas we have never materialize because we don't know where or how to begin. That's what Steven Pressfield seeks to help us with in "Do the Work"



I first found out about "Do the Work" on Seth Godin's blog. I was able to download the kindle version of the book for free on Amazon (at the time of this post the kindle version is still free). It's a pretty quick read.

The book begins with a review of Pressfield's concept of "the resistance"--basically the opposition you feel when attempting to do anything meaningful. He discusses the importance of overcoming “the resistance and then offers principles for breaking up a major goal into actionable segments. The main ideas I took from the book were:

  • --Take your goal. Start from the end and fill in 3 major points between where you are now and where you want to end up. Then fill in the gaps between those points. Repeat this process until you have a good plan developed.
 
  • --Act then reflect. Act then reflect. In other words, do something--write something, play something, move something, etc--then go back and reflect or rewrite, retool, adjust, modify, etc later. This approach helps us to at least begin our journey. Instead of trying to figure everything out upfront, just start and tweak it later.

I'm trying to be more disciplined about taking the small steps necessary to make some of my ideas realities.  If you feel the same, “Do the Work” is a short book that's worth checking out.
If you liked this post, subscribe and get new posts via email:

2 comments:

Apple said...

I think I'm gonna check this book out.

Trevor said...

Cool! Let me know what you think of it.

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...