Steven Pressfi
eld
Do Th
e Work!
18
Start Before You’re Ready Don’t prepare. Begin.
Remember, our enemy is not
lack of preparation; it’s not the
diffi
culty of the project or the
state of the marketplace or the
emptiness of our bank account.
The enemy is Resistance.Th
e enemy is our chattering brain,
which, if we give it so much as a
nanosecond, will start producing
excuses, alibis, transparent self-
justifi
cations, and a million reasons
why we can’t/shouldn’t/won’t do
what we know we need to do.
Start before you’re ready.Good things happen when we start before we’re ready. For one thing, we showhuevos. Our blood heats up. Courage begets
more courage. The gods, witnessing our boldness, look on in ap-proval. W. H. Murray said:Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineff ectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one defi nitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Begin it now.
A Research Diet 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.