Do The Work

2011 April 21

by Tyler

Studies show that my generation has what some call an “entitlement complex.” We want and feel we deserve jobs and roles with great titles, but we do not want to do the work to get there or the work needed to do the job well.

I’ve always prided myself in being a person who gets done what he says he will do. It might mean I make less friends because I don’t say “yes I can do that” as often as others, but it also means I rarely let people down.

But this doesn’t mean I do everything with the same level of tenacity and passion.

I started reading a brand new book Do the Work by Steven Pressfield (free for Kindle for now) the author of the highly touted book The War of Art. In the book Steven dives into the subject of doing work all the way to completion while focusing on creative artists.

I’ve been looking forward to reading it because I see myself as someone (probably like many others) who completes a lot of things but not necessarily with my best. On passion Pressfield says:

“You may think that you’ve lost your passion, or that you can’t identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true.

Fear saps passion.

When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.”

If I’m honest I think my fear is that if I give everything I have at one moment, I will have nothing left to give in the next moment, even though my experience says this isn’t true.

What is your fear which trumps your passion?

Filed under: the rest... Tags: books

http://gmail.com Adam Dickey

Tyler, I think that this post is intriguing. And, before I continue, I have to say of all the people I know who blog I enjoy yours the most, well its really the only one I read, but thats beside the point. I know people. They blog. Yours is good.

On to the topic. I have two things that come to mind with this post. The first is my long journey through graduate school to end shortly with a job that has “meaning.” I find this need for a job with meaning to be odd for one reason. If you ask those closest to me they have all caught me at one time or another daydreaming while out at a restaurant or coffee shop and they ask, “Adam, HELLO, where are you?” I always reply, ” I could work here.” When I see someone enjoying their job serving others in a restaurant, bar, or shop of some sort, my mind wonders to the first job training I got working with my parents. They instilled in me a drive to work, work hard, and succeed for the betterment of others and self. Since I was 10, I always had a place at our family business. I felt a part of it. The odd jobs I had as a child around our family business helped me see the valuable work my mind and body can do for others. But, I had to encounter my fear there first. My fear to fail, to not do it right, to have to do it over.

This brings me to my second point. We are petrified of being wrong! I recently watched a TED video on Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz. If you watch, Schulz describes what I think, and where I think my fear comes from. I dont want to be wrong. I hate being wrong! If I work hard, if I put my neck out there, I have a chance of being wrong. I wonder if this is a very common feeling among ouR generation? I also wonder if we have an even stronger dose of it because of the the era in which we were raised? I wonder how we are going to over come as we begin to fill the shoes of those before us.
http://www.manofdepravity.com Tyler

Here’s the link to the TED talk Adam referred to for anyone who wants to watch:

http://blog.ted.com/2011/04/19/on-being-wrong-kathryn-schulz-on-ted-com/

Thanks for the compliment Dickey. I totally agree with your point too. One of things Steven has already talked about in the short book (I’m almost halfway through) is resistance, the things that hold us back from getting work done. There is no doubt that fear of being wrong is resistance. We have to come to accept our fallibility in order to take the risks which bring out truly great creative ideas which help us get work done.
http://www.contentunderpressure.net Josh

Timely post for me, my friend.

I’m currently in a funk music-wise. I haven’t written anything in a while, and the more I sit with that the more fear creeps in. Was my first recording it? Will I ever write anything again? Will I even like it? Ah, the questions that fear brings to my over-analyzing brain sometimes. I hate it. Hate. It.
http://thoughtsaboutnothing.com Kyle Reed

mediocrity
http://www.messycanvas.com Mandy

I agree with Adam. Fear of being wrong. Looking forward to watching the Ted talk sometime:
http://somewiseguy.com ThatGuyKC

Great post, Tyler.

I’ve been reading a lot of Project Domino stuff lately and felt the push to “Do the Work”.

I think what I fear the most is not having the time. Between work, family, life and MBA studies I’m pretty tapped out. That doesn’t mean I can’t DO though and I’m trying to make progress in chasing the dream on my blog.

Hope you enjoy the Easter weekend.
http://Creativetheology.com Sam Mahlstadt

Just finished Do The Work last night. It was a tremendous follow-up read to The War of Art. So encouraging and challenging.
Currently I’m vacillating between fear of failure and fear of success. Both, of course, Resistence.