Subtitle: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Listen Here
Interesting People
Tim Urban (Website/https://twitter.com/waitbutwhyTwitter)
Naval Ravikant (Website/Twitter/Must Read Free Book)
Jim Collins (Website/ Tim Ferris Show Episode)
Interesting Links
Books Mentioned
Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon
Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
Keep Going by Austin Kleon
Predictably Irrational
Win Bigly by Scott Adams
Life Begins at the Edge of Your Comfort Zone
How To Fail At Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Zero To One by Peter Thiel
Good To Great by Jim Collins
Extra Notes
These are Notes that didn't make it into the episode, but still hold value in them.
-The secret is that what's hard is sitting down to write, not the writing part. It's about overcoming resistance.
-Hope Holds on Pain Ends.
The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer if you so much as to say hello, you're finished. The pro doesn't even pick up the phone. He stays at work".
For the stakes, it doesn't have to be a life or death situation. But, having your own self-imposed stakes is what makes you a professional.
-The word amateur comes from the Latin root meaning "to love".
-"You either climb the mountain and get the prize, or sit on the side and eat the fries"~Abdelrahman Mahir 2019.
-Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now" ~W. H. Murray. The Scottish Himalayan Expedition.
A key idea from the book is the difference between the Ego and the Self. For Pressfield, Ego is our day-to-day manager. It thinks, plans, and keep us rolling in life. The self, on the other hand, is a higher entity. It encompasses the ego, but it goes beyond it. The self includes our unconscious, dreams, and intuition. It's where the soul lies. Pressfield goes on describing both and their differences, but it'll give a TLDR version. It won't give them justice, but it's my own try. The ego lies in the materialistic plane of existence. It wants the status quo to stay, not really challenging ourselves and not evolving. The self is in a higher transcendence plane. Its plane is where ideas and inspirations come from. It cries for us to evolve and be visionary about a limitless future.
In Pressfield's words, near-death experiences or when people are facing death due to illnesses, move them from the ego to the self. The priorities change and what really matters comes to the surface. But, we don't really need to experience death to move towards the self. We just need to beat resistance, every day.
The artist's territory. An example of a territory is writing for Pressfield, football for Messi, or tweeting for Elon Musk. It's where they feel natural and dominant.
So, how do you know your territory? Well, there're some qualities. Your territory should sustain you without the need for external input. It's where you feel the zone, get back what you put in. It's where you do the work, for the sake of it. Not for anyone's attention of validation. As Krishna instructed Arjuna in the Gita, the Hindu scripture, we have a right to our labor, but not the fruits of our labor.
This process (i.e. Work everyday) is how creative work is sparked, and it humanizes it. There's no god-given ability or, as Pressfield puts it, "some grid of energy and inspiration that artists connect to". It's in our everyday life, and it's happening all day in our heads.
Episode Transcript
Episode Introduction
[0:00] Hello and welcome to the TLDR Show. A podcast where I distill the knowledge of books just for you. I am your host, Abdelrahman, and I am very excited to have you with me. For our second series of books, I took a different turn. I needed light books that were fun to read and can be easily finished in a couple of days. And as I mentioned at the end of the previous series, these books are very related to how TLDR Show became.
So, the theme for this series is creativity. If you're saying, well, I'm not a creative person. My answer to you comes from an example I'll mention later. Creativity is in everything, from your job to how you arrange your room, and even in making that late-night noodles bowl. I wrote the episodes so that even if your career or hobbies aren't in the creative field, you'll find some great value in them.
We have four books in this series. Starting with the War of Art by Steven Pressfield, followed by Steal Like An Artist trilogy by Austin Kleon. The trilogy consists of Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work, and Keep Going.
Each episode, we will dive into each one and learn some great insights. I do hope you enjoy the episodes, as much as I enjoyed making them for you.
Without further a due, let us dive into our first book, The War of Art, subtitled Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield.
The War of Art Introduction
[1:30] When the forward for the book include, "he wrote it for me because I hold the Olympic records for procrastination. I can procrastinate thinking about my procrastination problem". You know the book will be good.
But, before we dive into it. Let me give you a short introduction about the author, Steven Pressfield. He's an American author of historical fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, and a former marine. Steven Pressfield is the best-selling author of fiction books including, The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Gates of Fire, and The Lion's Gate. His non-fiction work had a tremendous impact on many people, which includes the War of Art, Do the Work and Turning Pro. I'll leave links to his Blog, where he writes weekly, as well as his Twitter at SPressfield.
Now, his ability as an amazing author appears in this book. It is written in a beautiful poetic language that conveys and stirs emotions and images. To the degree that, I wanted to highlight every line and admire its beauty. And taking notes was even worse. Since my words never seem enough to convey what I was reading and feeling. However, here goes my attempt to give you a TLDR version of the War of Art.
What I Do
[2:46] The first part of the book is titled "What I Do". Here, Pressfield lays down his daily routine. Few things stand out. One, the number of lucky items that he equips for each writing session. A lucky sweatshirt, lucky charm, lucky name tag among other ones. Two, how specific the routine is. Each step is followed by another, till he starts writing. These two points show how he conditions himself to perform, and we explored this idea in our previous series on human nature. And the last point that stands out is what he really counts by the end of it all. He doesn't care about the number of pages. He cares that he had put in the time and gave it his all, and overcome Resistance.
The book is broken down into 3 main sections, defining the enemy, Becoming Pro, and Beyond Resistance. Let us start with defining the enemy.
Resistance: Defining the Enemy
The Unlived Life
[3:38] Now, I want you to remember. Have you ever gave up on a diet, a hobby you wanted to start, a new year resolution that you failed to commit to? Do you sometimes, just before sleeping, imagine what would your life be, and the person you could have become?
Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between these two stands Resistance.
Resistance includes all and everything that stops us from pursuing a goal or a dream. It comes up the moment we want to try to commit to long-term goals over short-term pleasure. If you remember our example of Tim Urban's Instant gratification monkey in EP#1. That monkey is a form of resistance. Want to learn a new skill, resistance comes and says what's the hurry, take a break, start it later. Decided to stop a bad habit, it comes again as you say to yourself, I'm stressed now, maybe one last time. Want to leave your job to look for a new one or open a business. Resistance comes again and tells you stories about how scary things could turn out, and sedate your inner desire.
However, resistance also operates at a much deeper level.
When we ask, who am I? Why am I here? What's the meaning of my life? These questions require answers that are beyond what's encoded in our genes. We're wired to be part of and act as a tribe. Our years of evolution as a civilization only gave birth to the idea of an individual quite recently. Resistance tries to convince us that, we should conform to society, follow what's laid before us and be comfortable with our status quo. And if we start to divert from the resistance path, it'll send its allies.
The thing is, following society's norms isn't a bad thing at all. But, doing it blindly or because we don't want to think for ourselves is the issue. For you, if you choose to follow the norms based on your understanding, then great. If you also choose to embrace the freedom and ambiguity of choice and be on your what I call "lost-Man" journey, well, that's great too.
Resistance Characteristics
[4:44] So, How does resistance look like? Let us have a look at some of its main characteristics.
For a starter, it's invisible. It's not physical, but can be felt. It's a negative energy that distracts and prevents us from doing our work. Not only that, but it's always pointing us away from the work. So, use this as your guide. The rule of thumb here is, the more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it. Although resistance appears to come from outside factors like family, career, or even friends, it's internal and comes from within. But sometimes after defeating it, resistance will need some help. Its allies could be friends or family members that after you committed to your new lifestyle or craft and beat your inner demons, they come and poke at you. They ask you, you're not the same person you were. Ironically, their comments could be reflections of their own struggles. In their minds, if you did it, why can't they? The best thing you can do is to act as an example and inspiration. And hopefully, they'll follow your steps.
Resistance is also eternal, and will never go away. Whether you're starting out or a veteran in your field, You'll have to keep fighting it every day. Resistance also feeds on our fear and becomes most powerful at the finish line. When the end is in sight, Resistance eludes us to relax and take a break. And there, we can be done for good.
Resistance Symptoms
[7:14] Now, this was how resistance looks like. Let us look at the symptoms. So, we can diagnose it.
The first symptom is our good old friend, procrastination. Here's how Pressfield describes it "The most pernicious, or lethal, aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed". We covered procrastination and how to beat in our first episode of Predictably Irrational. Give it a listen if you didn't.
The second important symptom is an addiction to activities that lead to an immediate rush of dopamine. From scrolling endlessly on social media to shopping, masturbation, TV, alcohol consumption, or eating junk food. If after finishing an activity, you feel empty and dread over what you just wasted your time on, it's a symptom of resistance.
Resistance also comes in the form of rationalization. Sometimes, it'll find some legit reasons why you shouldn't do the work. This connects to cognitive dissonance, from Win Bigly in EP#4. As a refresher, It is the mental condition in which people rationalize why their actions are inconsistent with their thoughts and beliefs.
Let us see an example. When the weather is hot, which is the majority of the time nowadays, I'll delay my recordings. My reason is that If it's too hot, I'll be sweating and annoyed, which will affect my quality of recordings. Then, I say to myself, just wait for tomorrow. It'll be cooler, and you can start recording. The cognitive dissonance is that I don't want to call myself a lazy or undisciplined person, so resistance comes with such rationalizations. Thank you resistance for protecting myself image.
Now, one of the trickiest symptoms of resistance is relying on support from Family and Friends. Let me explain it by a line from the book, "Seeking support from friends and family is like having your people gathered around at your deathbed. It's nice, but when the ship sails, all they can do is stand on the dock waving goodbye". What Pressfield is pointing here is that, when the push comes to shove, you'll be standing alone. And you better not rely on anyone's support. This becomes very important when your support system is built around getting it from outsiders, rather than from within. It's when comments from people on your progress get you to workout or receiving praise from your boss keeps you going or the number of likes and views determines how much you're willing to push yourself to work on your hobby. This's what Pressfield is arguing against. At the end of the day, when you're feeling down, you should rely on yourself to get back up, not on anyone else.
Another point that I didn't find a term for it, is how telling people about your goals and actions gives you just enough gratification and a sense of accomplishment that you just stop. Look around you and see the ones who keep saying I'll start my diet or working out this month, or I'll read a new book each week. Or my goal is to learn Spanish. Some of them succeed, but the ones who fail, experienced a small dose of accomplishment while telling everyone about their goals.
Here's a story from this podcast. When I initially planned to release it, I posted the potential logos on Instagram to ask for feedback. This act of posting gave me a small gratification bomb that just made me happy enough, to not work on the podcast for days.
So, what can you do? Personally, I think that, If you want to seek support from family and friends, they should be the closest circle, the ones who matter to you.
If you want to be public about a goal, as a form of accountability, introduce a penalty. So, if you achieve the goal, hallelujah. If not, you'll have to do the penalty.
Good Resistance Symptoms
[10:41] Now, let's talk about two good resistance symptoms that show you're on the right track.
The first one is self-doubt. It's an indicator of an aspiration to a higher level or a dream. If you're questioning yourself, am I a writer, artist, engineer, entrepreneur, chances are you are one. And hopefully, on a path to a higher level.
The second sign is fear. If you're almost paralyzed with fear, then you're on the right track. From our rule of thumb earlier, we can say that the greater the fear we experience, the greater the resistance. Fear also means we're gonna experience something new, exciting, and thrilling. And a title of a book that fits is "Life Begins at the Edge of Your Comfort Zone". So, If you're really afraid, then stare down that fear every day, and you keep doing the work
Now, we know that resistance can be beaten. You have probably done it yourself a few times. I'll give you a second to remember one of your greatest achievements. Have a smile at it, and then come back to me.
Becoming Pro
[11:48] Now, we have seen how resistance looks like and its symptoms. To fight resistance, we need to become a professional. When talking about professionals, we don't mean engineers, doctors, or lawyers. These are professions. A professional for us is an ideal to aspire to.
The good news for us is that we're all professionals in one area of our lives, our jobs.
Let us make some comparisons and see How you act in work as a professional and how an amateur acts.
In your job as a professional, you show up every day, regardless of what's happening, the weather, or the amount of sleep you got. You still show up, and stay on the job all day, even though you could be daydreaming for two-thirds of it. But you still sit down and keep rolling.
For you, the stakes are high. Your career could be the backbone for your family and dreams. So, you keep mastering the skills and developing yourself.
And lastly, you don't over-identify with your job. You understand that your job description doesn't reveal who you are as a person.
An amateur, on the other hand, won't show every day. If the weather isn't that good, they might skip a day or two. For them, the stakes are almost non-existent. Self-development isn't a need, it's a nice thing to do. They embody their career. This becomes an issue when facing failures and criticism. It becomes personal and resistance will slip in. It'll create narratives about how this failure or criticism means that they're a failure as a whole, and should quit.
What you as a professional do when faced with failure or criticism is to have a look and seek to learn and grow. To understand that the critics aren't the enemy, resistance is. So, you soldier on and keep moving forward. The idea of facing criticism will come again in each of the next three books, and we'll learn some tactics from Man In the Arena to a boxing lesson. So, stay tuned.
What Makes a Professional
[13:48] Now, let's have a look at what makes you a professional
You are patient. You understand that this effort is for the long term. Likewise, you don't just jump in, make unrealistic goals, and burn out yourself in the process. You know that it'll take longer than you think, and a ton of hiccups will rise along the way. But, you understand the reality and build a system around it. An example of a system is what Pressfield does in his daily routine. There's no goal in the sense of a number of pages to be completed. There's a system of writing every day till he finishes his creative mind. The same idea can be applied in many areas from daily reading, walking, exercising, or maybe your commitment to learning a new skill every 6 months. The focus should be on consistency and effort. Results and goals will come as a byproduct.
Two side notes here. This idea of why building systems are more important than goals is explored in "How To Fail At Almost Everything and Still Win Big" by Scott Adams.
The 2nd side note is a good exercise to remind us that we'll face adversity every day, from Marcus Aurelius. He was the Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher, and the last of what's called the Five Good Emperors. In his book Meditations, which is a collection of personal reflections that were never intended for publishing. He wrote "When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil". This doesn't mean everyone is bad, but when eventually you meet that A-hole of the day, they won't affect you as much.
Let us get back onto the track. Being a professional means you are Stoic. You understand that you can only control 3 things, your thoughts, actions, and reactions. Everything else is out of your control. When faced with difficulties, you don't get emotional and angry, and you don't take it personally. What you do is maintain your sovereignty over yourself.
Being a professional also means that you seek order in your own right. You eliminate the chaos that can interfere with your work, accept no excuses, and don't talk about the work. You just do it.
The last piece of advice on becoming a professional is you incorporate yourself, or at least you think of yourself in that way. So, you act as if you're managing a company, and its only employee is you. You can have your daily or weekly morning meeting. Have Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that you need to meet, and annual goals to be achieved. When you review your performance, you look at it from a position of a supervisor reviewing his subordinate. In a way, you take the system from your morning job and carry it over to your personal life.
If you're saying, this's too much, and I don't want my life to be like my job. I want you to think about what makes companies succeed over long periods of time. It's the systems that they're built on. One of the key ideas I got from the book "Zero To One" by Peter Thiel, the German-American venture capitalist and co-founder of PayPal. The idea was that how organizations as a whole can be treated as social creatures. What applies to humans in psychology, can apply to companies and vice-versa. If you see a system that's working for a company, there's definitely a way of implementing it on a human level. So, incorporate yourself, and achieve those quarterly goals.
Now, with this, we know how to turn pro. There's no mystery to it. It's a simple decision.
Beyond Resistance
Higher Realms
[17:37] The last part of the book talks about the forces that maintain us in our journey, beyond resistance.
Pressfield refers to these forces as Angels and muses. If you don't like the terms, just think of both as our allies in our fight against Resistance. We'll go a bit using his mystical view and then switch to a more structured view.
Muses were nine daughters of Zeus, the Greek god. Their task was to inspire artists.
So, how do we get these allies to come to our aid?
The answer is simple, sitting down and Start Doing the work. The muse will come and whisper inspiration into your ear, and you'll have that aha moment. The angels will come to help us to evolve and grow.
The point of the personification of resistance muses, and angels is that it'll create a strong image that will be imprinted into your brain. In the movie "The Social Dilemma", they show the algorithm as a group of 3 people that are working tirelessly on ensuring that you're always hooked to your phone. After watching it, every time I start mindlessly scrolling, I'll remember them, and stop.
The same will happen for resistance. Every time you come up with an excuse, you'll have this image of an evil person "Resistance" that's trying to stop you from doing your work. For muses and angels, they provide a nice image that can help you in the dark hours or when inspiration hits.
Beyond Poetic Images
[19:01] Now, let us go beyond poetic images and see some concepts that I believe relate to going beyond resistance.
The 4 Types of Luck
The first idea is the types of luck. I heard this in Naval's podcast, which I referenced many times in previous episodes. He talks about an article written by Marc Andreessen in his blog titled "Luck and the Entrepreneur: The four kinds of luck". Here're they:
Type I: we can also call it Blind Luck. It's the one that happens out of absolute chance, out of our control. This would be like winning the lottery.
Type II: is the one that happens out of hustling and actions. This one comes from trying and doing many activities and actions, and as a matter of probability, we'll strike luck somehow. Here, this could be us working on different projects, activities, industries and eventually making a breakthrough because of the sheer number of activities we are involved in.
Type III: the third type is the one that comes because of preparation and expertise. Here, because of these two, you can notice what other people are missing in your field. This could be in the form of starting a company that fulfills a need in your industry. In a way, in types 1&2, luck finds you, here you find luck.
Type IV: the last type of luck is described by what Benjamin Disraeli, the English Prime Minister, said: "We make our fortunes, and we call them fate”. This one comes to the people with unique characteristics, brands, or sets of skills. If in the third type, you find luck because of who you're, here luck finds you. Let me give an example. If you're among the best in the world of marketing and the next unicorn startup comes and recruits you. Later, your company becomes worth billions of dollars. Them becoming worth billions is luck, but them asking for you isn't. You created it with your skills.
The Flywheel Concept by Jim Collins
[20:50] The second concept that I want to point to is the flywheel by Jim Collins. He's an American author and a polymath. His book Good To Great is among the best business books out there. In it, he observes what makes some companies leap and how others fail. The flywheel effect is among the main principles discussed in Good to Great.
If you imagine that you have a large flywheel, that is 10 meters in diameter and weighs a ton. If you were tasked with pushing it to reach a certain speed. When you start, you'll need Herculean effort. You may not even see any movements at the beginning, but you have to keep pushing. Then, at one point, you'll complete a turn, then a second one, third, fourth. You keep pushing, and at some point, it gains momentum. Each turn builds on the energy from the one before, and now you don't push as hard, but gain much faster turns.
If someone came and said to you, "Wow, you're the strongest person on earth. How come you made it turn this fast?". You'll understand that from the outside, people only recognized maybe the speed at the 1000th turn. But, no one saw you struggling till you reach it.
We do the work every day, and slowly start turning the wheel till it gains moments. As you keep working, you'll start getting obsessed. And your mind will follow, connecting the dots, revising, and correcting. A self example is during the reading of any book. In the initial stage, there's usually nothing. No theme, no linkage, or outside ideas. It's after I finish the notes, and let my mind process it, that while taking a shower or walking, ideas would come up. Or just before sleeping, I'll hurry and write them on my phone. And to paraphrase Hannibal from the movie "The A-Team" "I love it when ideas come together". In a way, this's my mini flywheel that I push for each episode.
The idea of why I'm bringing both the types of luck and the flywheel is to show the importance of doing the work. For the 3 types of luck, 2-4, they are based on your work. For the flywheel to start flying, it's all about doing the work every single day.
In our fourth book of the series, Keep Going. We'll look into ways that can help us beyond resistance. So, stay tuned.
Conclusion
[23:18] To wrap things up, I'll use the Hero's journey as a metaphor. The hero's journey is a story structure that you see in novels, movies, and sometimes life. There are many ways to structure it, but I'll go with a simplified, open-ended 3 acts.
In our first act, we all have a calling within us to an adventure, a calling to our unlived life, and we refuse it. Resistance comes and gives us stories and reasons on why we shouldn't do it. It feeds on our fear and recruits allies when needed. So, we procrastinate. We get short doses of dopamine from shopping or food. We stay living an empty, unfulfilled, and unhappy life.
Then, one day, we cross the first threshold. We get angry with the boredom, and we do the work for the first time. Resistance comes back, fighting harder than before. Its allies are all over us, doubting and shaking their heads at our change.
Here is where our second act begins. Our road of trials. We see the good signs of resistance. We start to self-doubt, we face fear, and we fall in love with the work. For the first time, we see resistance for what it's. An ugly force that's dragging us down, but we push forward.
But, we sometimes fall short. We start rationalizing why we need to stop. We take failure and criticism personally. And there, resistance comes bearing its ugly head back. And we lose the battle.
But, as we struggle, we grow and turn Pro. Our 3rd act starts. Here, we get a better understanding of who we're. We become patient, realistic, and Stoic.
From here onwards, it's not smooth sailing, but we have the angels and muses to help us. We come to understand what Telamon of Arcadia said in the 5th century B.C "It's one thing to study war and another to live the warrior's life". And we let the journey begin. We keep pushing the flywheel and luck shall find us.
I'll end the episode with the final line from the book "Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us off your contribution. Give us what you've got".
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Let me know how did you meet your resistance, did you manage to defeat or did it get the upper hand over you? Send me your stories over Twitter and Instagram at TldrShow.
Next week, we will cover the second book of this series, "Steal Like An Artist" and see how there's nothing that's original, and everyone is an art thief.
As always, make sure to check the website at tldr-show.com for the show notes, links to social media, episode transcript, and the extra good stuff. Till next time, be critical, be curious.
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