"The War Of Art" by Stephen Pressfield

[georgec]

I think fellow Mustachians will find this book of great value. It was — and is — instrumental in getting me out of unfocused self-pitying slumps. Not limited to "artists", the concepts here apply to anyone looking to achieve something that doesn't involve immediate gratification.

Pressfield personifies this chasm between who we are and who we aim to be as "Resistance". The most common form of which is procrastination. As well as procrastination's henchman, perfectionism.

A compact read (short but densely-packed with wisdom), I find myself going back to it again and again for inspiration and motivation. The audiobook version is excellent.

[georgec]

A nice quote from the book, relevant to this forum:

"We’re doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.
 
Many pedestrians have been maimed or killed at the intersection of Resistance and Commerce."

[seathink]

I love this book and have read it many times! Pressfield has his own publishing house, http://shop.blackirishbooks.com/, and if you sign up for the weekly essays (most very good!) you get sweet deals on free e-books from their library at least once a year. I received the companion to The War of Art, Do the Work, that way.

[georgec]

I think most who read it, do so more than once! I enjoyed "Do The Work" as well, and also the followup to TWOA — "Turning Pro".

Good to know on the email list, thanks!

[georgec]

Another great passage (I'm re-listening to the audiobook as I work today):

"…we live in a consumer culture that’s acutely aware of this unhappiness and has massed all its profit-seeking artillery to exploit it. By selling us a product, a drug, a distraction…

As artists and professionals it is our obligation to enact our own internal revolution, a private insurrection inside our own skulls. In this uprising we free ourselves from the tyranny of consumer culture. We overthrow the programming of advertising, movies, video games, magazines, TV, and MTV by which we have been hypnotized from the cradle. We unplug ourselves from the grid by recognizing that we will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work."