Author: Steven Pressfield
Recommended for: Anyone working on a creative or entrepreneurial endeavor
Last Read: June 2014, October 2019

Quick Summary:

I had ready many of Steven Pressfield’s novels before I had discovered his works  on the creative spirit.  Do the Work is a short read that discusses the role of Resistance in the projects that we tackle.  Pressfield shares anecdotes and provides motivation for pushing past resistance, doing the work, and shipping whatever you’re working on.

While a little woo-woo and out there, I must admit that Do the Work has opened my eyes to the role that Resistance plays in my life.  I have streamlined my processes, separated research and action, and committed doing the work. With results like that, I can’t knock the woo-woo side.

For those interested in creating or producing something, read this book. If you like the book, you can follow it up with The War of Art.

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

I was thirty years old before I had an actual thought. Everything up till then was either what Buddhists call “monkey-mind” chatter or the reflexive regurgitation of whatever my parents or teachers said, or whatever I saw on the news or read in a book, or heard somebody rap about, hanging around the street corner. 

Key Lessons:

• The best way to combat Resistance is to commit yourself to doing your work without fail. Show up, every day, like a professional. 
• Don’t let anything delay you from taking action, because that’s how Resistance creeps in. Act, then revise. Bias yourself toward action.

My Highlights

Italicized sub-bullet comments are mine.

• On the field of the Self stand a knight and a dragon.   You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon. 
• Resistance cannot be seen, heard, touched, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. 
• 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. 
• 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. 
• The problem with friends and family is that they know us as we are. They are invested in maintaining us as we are. The last thing we want is to remain as we are. 
• 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. 
• 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 and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate. 
• Don’t think. Act. We can always revise and revisit once we’ve acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act. 
• Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is to stop. 
• There’s an exercise that Patricia Ryan Madson describes in her wonderful book, Improv Wisdom. (Ms. Madson taught improvisational theater at Stanford to standing-room only classes for twenty years.) Here’s the exercise: Imagine a box with a lid. Hold the box in your hand. Now open it. What’s inside? It might be a frog, a silk scarf, a gold coin of Persia. But here’s the trick: no matter how many times you open the box, there is always something in it. Ask me my religion. That’s it. I believe with unshakeable faith that there will always be something in the box. 
• Fear saps passion. When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.
• When art and inspiration and success and fame and money have come and gone, who still loves us—and whom do we love? Only two things will remain with us across the river: our inhering genius and the hearts we love. 
• 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. 
• Good things happen when we start before we’re ready. For one thing, we show huevos. Our blood heats up. Courage begets more courage. The gods, witnessing our boldness, look on in approval. 
• 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. 
• The creative act is primitive. Its principles are of birth and genesis. Babies are born in blood and chaos; stars and galaxies come into being amid the release of massive primordial cataclysms. Conception occurs at the primal level. I’m not being facetious when I stress, throughout this book, that it is better to be primitive than to be sophisticated, and better to be stupid than to be smart. 
• If you and I want to do great stuff, we can’t let ourselves work small. A home-run swing that results in a strikeout is better than a successful bunt or even a line-drive single. 
• Steve, God made a single sheet of yellow foolscap exactly the right length to hold the outline of an entire novel. 
• He meant don’t overthink. Don’t overprepare. Don’t let research become Resistance. Don’t spend six months compiling a thousand-page tome detailing the emotional matrix and family history of every character in your book. Outline it fast. Now. On instinct. 
• Discipline yourself to boil down your story/new business/philanthropic enterprise to a single page. 
• 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. 
• Here’s a trick that screenwriters use: work backwards. Begin at the finish. 
• If you’re writing a movie, solve the climax first. If you’re opening a restaurant, begin with the experience you want the diner to have when she walks in and enjoys a meal. If you’re preparing a seduction, determine the state of mind you want the process of romancing to bring your lover to. Figure out where you want to go; then work backwards from there. 
• Yes, you say. “But how do I know where I want to go?” Answer the Question “What Is This About?” Start with the theme. What is this project about? 
• Have you ever meditated? Then you know what it feels like to shift your consciousness to a witnessing mode and to watch thoughts arise, float across your awareness, and then drift away, to be replaced by the next thought and the thought after that. These are not thoughts. They are chatter. 
• I was thirty years old before I had an actual thought. Everything up till then was either what Buddhists call “monkey-mind” chatter or the reflexive regurgitation of whatever my parents or teachers said, or whatever I saw on the news or read in a book, or heard somebody rap about, hanging around the street corner. 
• Pay no attention to those rambling, disjointed images and notions that drift across the movie screen of your mind. Those are not your thoughts. They are chatter. They are Resistance. 
• Chatter is Resistance. Its aim is to reconcile you to “the way it is,” to make you exactly like everyone else, to render you amenable to societal order and discipline. 
• Where do our own real thoughts come from? How can we access them? From what source does our true, authentic self speak? Answering that is the work you and I will do for the rest of our lives. 
  • This is a purpose to latch onto
• We’ve got our concept, we’ve got our theme. We know our start. We know where we want to finish. We’ve got our project in three acts on a single sheet of foolscap. Ready to roll? We need only to remember our three mantras: Stay primitive. Trust the soup. Swing for the seats. And our final-final precept: 4. Be ready for Resistance.
• David Lean famously declared that a feature film should have seven or eight major sequences. That’s a pretty good guideline for our play, our album, our State of the Union address. 
• Do research early or late. Don’t stop working. Never do research in prime working time. 
• One trick they use is to boil down their presentation to the following: A killer opening scene Two major set pieces in the middle A killer climax A concise statement of the theme In other words, they’re filling in the gaps. The major beats. 
• One rule for first full working drafts: get them done ASAP. Don’t worry about quality. Act, don’t reflect. Momentum is everything. 
• Unless you’re building a sailboat or the Taj Mahal, I give you a free pass to screw up as much as you like. The inner critic? His ass is not permitted in the building. Set forth without fear and without self-censorship. When you hear that voice in your head, blow it off. This draft is not being graded. There will be no pop quiz. Only one thing matters in this initial draft: get SOMETHING done, however flawed or imperfect. You are not allowed to judge yourself. 
• Nothing is more fun than turning on the recorder and hearing your own voice telling you a fantastic idea that you had completely forgotten you had. 
• 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. 
  • A principle of creation
• Forget rational thought. Play. Play like a child. Why does this purely instinctive, intuitive method work? Because our idea (our song, our ballet, our new Tex-Mex restaurant) is smarter than we are. 
• 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. 
• When an idea pops into our head and we think, “No, this is too crazy,” … that’s the idea we want. When we think, “This notion is completely off the wall … should I even take the time to work on this?” … the answer is yes. Never doubt the soup. Never say no. The answer is always yes. 
• At least twice a week, I pause in the rush of work and have a meeting with myself. (If I were part of a team, I’d call a team meeting.) I ask myself, again, of the project: “What is this damn thing about?” Keep refining your understanding of the theme; keep narrowing it down. 
• Paddy Chayefsky famously said, “As soon as I figure out the theme of my play, I write it down on a thin strip of paper and Scotch-tape it to the front of my typewriter. After that, nothing goes into that play that isn’t on-theme.”
• We have been conditioned to imagine that the darkness that we see in the world and feel in our own hearts is only an illusion, which can be dispelled by the proper care, the proper love, the proper education, and the proper funding. It can’t. There is an enemy. There is an intelligent, active, malign force working against us. Step one is to recognize this. This recognition alone is enormously powerful. It saved my life, and it will save yours.
• Principle Number Two: This Enemy Is Implacable The hostile, malicious force that we’re experiencing now is not a joke. It is not to be trifled with or taken lightly. It is for real. In the words of my dear friend Rabbi Mordecai Finley: “It will kill you. It will kill you like cancer.” This enemy is intelligent, protean, implacable, inextinguishable, and utterly ruthless and destructive. 
• Pat Riley, when he was coach of the Lakers, had a term for all those off-court forces, like fame and ego (not to mention crazed fans, the press, agents, sponsors, and ex-wives), that worked against the players’ chances for on-court success. He called these forces “peripheral opponents.”
• Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. It does not arise from rivals, bosses, spouses, children, terrorists, lobbyists, or political adversaries. It comes from us. 
• The fourth axiom of Resistance is that the enemy is inside you, but it is not you. 
• 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. 
• On the field of the Self stand a knight and a dragon. You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon. There is no way to be nice to the dragon, or to reason with it or negotiate with it or beam a white light around it and make it your friend. The dragon belches fire and lives only to block you from reaching the gold of wisdom and freedom, which it has been charged to guard to its final breath. The only intercourse possible between the knight and the dragon is battle. The contest is life-and-death, mano a mano. It asks no quarter and gives none. This is the fifth principle of Resistance. 
  • I know the truth of this, deep in my bones
• The sixth principle of Resistance (and the key to overcoming it) is that Resistance arises second. What comes first is the idea, the passion, the dream of the work we are so excited to create that it scares the hell out of us. 
• Resistance is the response of the frightened, petty, small-time ego to the brave, generous, magnificent impulse of the creative self. 
• It means that before the dragon of Resistance reared its ugly head and breathed fire into our faces, there existed within us a force so potent and life-affirming that it summoned this beast into being, perversely, to combat it. 
• In myths and legends, the knight is always aided in his quest to slay the dragon. Providence brings forth a champion whose role is to assist the hero. Theseus had Ariadne when he fought the Minotaur. Jason had Medea when he went after the Golden Fleece. Odysseus had the goddess Athena to guide him home. In Native American myths, our totemic ally is often an animal—a magic raven, say, or a talking coyote. In Norse myths, an old crone sometimes assists the hero; in African legends, it’s often a bird. The three Wise Men were guided by a star. All of these characters or forces represent Assistance. They are symbols for the unmanifested. They stand for a dream. The dream is your project, your vision, your symphony, your startup. The love is the passion and enthusiasm that fill your heart when you envision your project’s completion. 
• Test Number One “How bad do you want it?” This is Resistance’s first question. The scale below will help you answer. Mark the selection that corresponds to how you feel about your book/movie/ballet/new business/whatever.   Dabbling • Interested • Intrigued but Uncertain • Passionate • Totally Committed   If your answer is not the one on the far right, put this book down and throw it away. 
• Test Number Two “Why do you want it?” 
• Because I have no choice 
• Did you ever see Cool Hand Luke? Remember “the Box”? You don’t get to keep anything when you enter this space. You must check at the door: Your ego Your sense of entitlement Your impatience Your fear Your hope Your anger You must also leave behind:   All grievances related to aspects of yourself dependent on the accident of birth, e.g., how neglected/abused/ mistreated/unloved/poor/ill-favored etc. you were when you were born. All sense of personal exceptionalness dependent on the accident of birth, e.g., how rich/cute/tall/thin/smart/charming/loveable you were when you were born. All of the previous two, based on any subsequent (i.e., post-birth) acquisition of any of these qualities, however honorably or meritoriously earned. The only items you get to keep are love for the work, will to finish, and passion to serve the ethical, creative Muse. 
• The Big Crash is so predictable, across all fields of enterprise, that we can practically set our watches by it. Bank on it. It’s gonna happen. 
  • The trough of sorrow in startup-speak
• There’s a difference between Navy SEAL training and what you and I are facing now. Our ordeal is harder. Because we’re alone. We’ve got no trainers over us, shouting in our ears or kicking our butts to keep us going. We’ve got no friends, no fellow sufferers, no externally imposed structure. No one’s feeding us, housing us, or clothing us. We have no objective milestones or points of validation. We can’t tell whether we’re doing great or falling on our faces. When we finish, if we do, no one will be waiting to congratulate us. We’ll get no champagne, no beach party, no diploma, no insignia. The battle we’re fighting, we can’t explain to anybody or share with anybody or call in anybody to help. 
• Crashes are hell, but in the end they’re good for us. A crash means we have failed. We gave it everything we had and we came up short. A crash does not mean we are losers. A crash means we have to grow. 
• A crash means we’re at the threshold of learning something, which means we’re getting better, we’re acquiring the wisdom of our craft. A crash compels us to figure out what works and what doesn’t work—and to understand the difference. 
• We got ourselves into this mess by mistakes we made at the start. How? Were we lazy? Inattentive? Did we mean well but forget to factor in human nature? Did we assess reality incorrectly? Whatever the cause, the Big Crash compels us to go back now and solve the problem that we either created directly or set into motion unwittingly at the outset. 
• Creative panic is good. Here’s why: Our greatest fear is fear of success. 
• When we experience panic, it means that we’re about to cross a threshold. We’re poised on the doorstep of a higher plane. 
• In the belly of the beast, we remind ourselves of two axioms: The problem is not us. The problem is the problem. Work the problem. 
• A professional does not take success or failure personally. That’s Priority Number One for us now. 
• That our project has crashed is not a reflection of our worth as human beings. It’s just a mistake. It’s a problem—and a problem can be solved. 
• I’m not trying to be cryptic or facetious. We went wrong at the start because the problem was so hard (and the act of solving it was so painful) that we ducked and dodged and bypassed. We hoped it would go away. We hoped it would solve itself. A little voice warned us then, but we were too smart to listen. The bad news is, the problem is hell. The good news is it’s just a problem. It’s not us. We are not worthless or evil or crazy. We’re just us, facing a problem. 
• We ask our Big Question: “What’s missing?” 
• No matter how great a writer, artist, or entrepreneur, he is a mortal, he is fallible. He is not proof against Resistance. He will drop the ball; he will crash. That’s why they call it rewriting. 
• Why does Seth Godin place so much emphasis on “shipping”? Because finishing is the critical part of any project. If we can’t finish, all our work is for nothing. 
• How hard is it to finish something? The greatest drama in the English language was written on this very subject. Hamlet knows he must kill his uncle for murdering his father. But then he starts to think—and the next thing you know, the poor prince is so self-befuddled, he’s ready to waste himself with a bare bodkin. 
• When Michael Crichton approached the end of a novel (so I’ve read), he used to start getting up earlier and earlier in the morning. He was desperate to keep his mojo going. He’d get up at six, then five, then three-thirty and two-thirty, till he was driving his wife insane. Finally he had to move out of the house. He checked into a hotel (the Kona Village, which ain’t so bad) and worked around the clock till he’d finished the book. Michael Crichton was a pro. He knew that Resistance was strongest at the finish. He did what he had to do, no matter how nutty or unorthodox, to finish and be ready to ship. 
• Marianne Williamson: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. 
• That’s why we’re so afraid of it. When we ship, we’ll be judged. The real world will pronounce upon our work and upon us. When we ship, we can fail. When we ship, we can be humiliated. 
• “You’re where you wanted to be, aren’t you? So you’re taking a few blows. That’s the price for being in the arena and not on the sidelines. Stop complaining and be grateful.” 
• When we ship, we open ourselves to judgment in the real world. Nothing is more empowering, because it plants us solidly on Planet Earth and gets us out of our self-devouring, navel-centered fantasies and self-delusions. 
• Slay that dragon once, and he will never have power over you again. Yeah, he’ll still be there. Yeah, you’ll still have to duel him every morning. And yeah, he’ll still fight just as hard and use just as many nasty tricks as he ever did. But you will have beaten him once, and you’ll know you can beat him again. That’s a game-changer. That will transform your life. 
• From the day I finally finished something, I’ve never had trouble finishing anything again. I always deliver. I always ship. 
  • A standard we should live by
• I stand in awe of anyone who hatches a dream and who shows the guts to hang tough, all alone, and see it through to reality. 
• I tip my hat to you for what you’ve done—for losing forty pounds, for kicking crack cocaine, for surviving the loss of someone you love, for facing any kind of adversity—internal or external—and slogging through. I come to attention when you walk past. I stand up for you like the spectators in the gallery stood up for Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird. 
• You have joined an elite fraternity, whether you realize it or not. By dint of your efforts and your perseverance, you have initiated yourself into an invisible freemasonry whose members are awarded no badges or insignia, share no secret handshake, and wear no funny-looking hats. But the fellows of this society recognize one another. I recognize you. I salute you. You can be proud of yourself. You’ve done something that millions talk about but only a handful actually perform. And if you can do it once, you can do it again. I don’t care if you fail with this project. I don’t care if you fail a thousand times. You have done what only mothers and gods do: you have created new life. 
• Then get back to work. Begin the next one tomorrow. Stay stupid. Trust the soup. Start before you’re ready.