I’ve only been finishing mostly novels of late, but I just finished Steven Pressfield’s Do the Work which Amazon offered free on kindle a while back. I reviewed a similar book of Pressfields a couple year’s back entitled The War of Art here.
Do the Work is similar to The War of Art in that the main theme is about overcoming barriers and resistance to creative efforts or really any change effort requiring incredible self initiative.
This book is about a quarter of the length of The War of Art and more focused on the creative process itself – the beginning, middle, and end of a self-initiated creative or change effort. The War of Art is a much more in depth treatment about the general dynamics of creative efforts, with much detail about the internal struggles and barriers towards progress and creativity.
Reading this book was one of my personal development action points for this fall as I was embarking on a large and easily overwhelming challenge of doing a lot of ministry fund raising this fall and this year. If you are vocation requiring support raising or fund raising of any kind, this is a helpful book from a motivational standpoint, but The War of Art would probably be even more helpful.
But if you’re doing any kind of writing or creative effort or design work, this is a very helpful resource because it walks you through some of the key emotional aspects for people in the beginning, middle, and concluding seasons of an effort. It can help you assess issues of fear and insecurity as you seek to create and make those type of contributions to the world that are inspired and come from your own passions.
The title captures the heart of the book – “Do the Work” in that there’s only one way to see creative work realized. And that’s to push through the various sources of resistance and keep doing the work until you’re done.
