I recently read Do The Work by Steven Pressfield, the latest book from Seth Godin’s Domino Project. The e-book is free for download on Kindle, so you should definitely get a copy. Anyways, there was one concept he touched on in the book that resonated with me and that I have noticed about myself lately.
I love to learn, increasing my personal knowledge, discovering new concepts, ideas, and truths. Doesn’t sound so bad does it? Well my problem is, I get into this routine where all I do is spend my time learning: reading books, exploring my RSS feeds, watching TED Talks, so on and so forth. As much as I’d like to think of this as productive, it really isn’t, its just another form of busy work or procrastination.
In Do The Work, Pressfield talks about how research (or learning) can essentially be a form of the ‘resistance’ or a force that prevents you from getting work done. I completely understand what he means. What’s important in all this is striking the balance between learning and creating, and more importantly, accepting that learning is great, but creating is better.
I’m sure I’m not alone in getting caught up in this web of knowledge, especially when so much information is readily available to us, but hopefully understanding that these kinds of things are just another distraction, will be the first step to being more aware of how we spend our time.
I enjoyed reading Do The Work, but it’s Pressfield’s other book, The War of Art, that is a must read.
