Just do The Thing

I don’t know where Joshua Fields Millburn was inspired by his advice, but Steven Pressfield, Nike, and he all have roughly the same thing to say: “Just do it.”

JFM said in “How to Improve Your Writing: 3 Tips”

I didn’t become a writer until I developed a writing habit. People don’t learn how to write via osmosis; it takes work. So forget word count or page count, and don’t worry about creating the perfect writing space—focus instead on sitting in the chair [emphasis mine] distraction-free, writing for at least an hour a day. Do this for a month and you will improve more than you thought possible.

In The War of Art, Pressfield talks about Resistance numerous factors surrounding it. I haven’t gotten too deep in it yet, but Resistance is what we have to fight every time we want to do something meaningful. You could be avoiding doing The Thing out of fear, worry, sheer boredom, whatever. At the very beginning of his book, he says

There’s a secret that real writers know about that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.

What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

This is the 15th day of my 30-day blogging challenge, so I’m over halfway there. I have to agree that the hardest part about it all was sitting down to write and get started. There’s always something to be distracted by: watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Hulu, playing with my dog, scrolling through the Twitter, …

But all of those things will be there after The Thing is done. You might also find that The Thing wasn’t so bad or it didn’t take as long as you thought it would. Just sit down and do it. You’ve got this!