"Do the work " is a book by best selling writer Steven pressfield. The book focuses on telling us that success is not always mostly about having better ideas but also about actually doing the work and get our idea out.
I picked up this book as I heardquite a lot about Steven Pressfield's book "The war of art" and the contents of the book were being quoted by many writers.I have heard a lot of people talk about resistance which is something we face that causes us to procrastinate on the various projects and plans which we undertake. So having come across all the talk about resistance I was really excited to read this book..
Do the work is divided into 4 sections and is quite a short book of 10* pages. Steven Pressfield uses imagery by denoting resistance as a dragon and ourselves as the knight. The use of imagery in a non-fiction book makes it quite a unique reading experience.
Let's check the various sections in the book -
1. Orientation - In this chapter Steven talks about our various enemies which we can meet during the moment when we try to work on our ideas to turn them into reality whether it may be a new article we are writing, a new business we are trying to start. Steven Pressfield talks about resistance and gives a good explanation on how it can manifest itself, what are the allies and enemies of the resistance, what are the qualities of resistance and concludes with how we can overcome the resistance
2. Beginning - In this lesson, Steven starts by seeing how should we go about to implement our idea. He talks about starting before we think we are ready, the amount of research we must do before we start. He then talks about dividing our work into smaller simpler acts, he gives examples of how big works could have been thought in smaller parts.
3. Middle - Here Steven Pressfield talks about filling the smaller acts which we have made by splitting the main work into smaller acts. Here he tells how the smaller acts can be done effectively. He also tells us about the opposite of resistance. He gives seven principles to overcome resistance and then talks about the tests of resistance.
4. Middle 2 - In this section Steven Pressfield talks about how it feels when we are half way and it happens that our work isn't really good. He then tells how we should analyze our problems and short comings in our work and improve our work.He gives an example from "Moby Dick" book about how the author improved his story by focusing on certain elements of the story
5. The end - The final chapter is about shipping our product to the world. Steven explains how resistance cab affect us during this process. He tells about how even fear of success and fear being exposed to criticism can prevent us from getting our work out in the world. Then he concludes by saying that resistance might come after we ship our work and when we are getting ready for our next project resistance can affect us but you can face it more easily knowing that you have faced and overcome it before.
Verdict - 4/5
The book was pretty good to read and can help especially if you are getting your ideas out into the world and face resistance in doing this. The book gives a good overview on resistance which most of us would be facing in most of the things we do.
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