Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [59]
resistance.
Tick Tick Tick
This is my twelfth book since 1999.
When I started my career, I was a book packager. My staff and I created more than a
hundred titles, working with various publishers. After that, I started and sold an Internet
company and then started a blog, gave some speeches, and started another Internet
company.
Am I some sort of prodigy? I don't think so. I ship. I don't get in the way of the muse, I
fight the resistance, and I ship. I do this by not doing an enormous number of tasks that
are perfect stalling devices, ideal ways of introducing the resistance into our lives.
A workaholic brings fear into the equation. She works all the time to be sure everything
is all right, and she experiences resistance all the time. She satisfies the raging fear of her
lizard brain by being at the job site all the time, just to be sure.
I'm not a workaholic. There's no fear because I've ingrained the habit of shipping. The
lizard brain has no chance, so it shuts up and finds something else to worry about.
By forcing myself to do absolutely no busywork tasks in between bouts with the work, I
remove the best excuse the resistance has. I can't avoid the work because I am not
distracting myself with anything but the work. This is the hallmark of a productive artist.
I don't go to meetings. I don't write memos. I don't have a staff. I don't commute. The
goal is to strip away anything that looks productive but doesn't involve shipping.
It takes crazy discipline to do nothing between projects. It means that you have to face a
blank wall and you can't look busy. It means you are alone with your thoughts, and it
means that a new project, perhaps a great project, will appear pretty soon, because your
restless energy can't permit you to only sit and do nothing.
Leo Babauta's brilliant little book Zen Habits helps you think your way through this
problem. His program is simple: Attempt to create only one significant work a year.
Break that into smaller projects, and every day, find three tasks to accomplish that will
help you complete a project. And do only that during your working hours. I'm talking
about an hour a day to complete a mammoth work of art, whatever sort of art you have in
mind. That hour a day might not be fun, but it's probably a lot more productive than the
ten hours you spend now.
People sabotage Leo's idea every day. They try to do the significant project at the same
time they pay lip service (and devote time) to all that surface nonsense that people say
you're supposed to spend your time on. Since they try to do both, they accomplish
neither. Or they pretend their project is significant, but it's actually trivial and far below
them.
Letting silence into your day gives the daemon a chance to be heard from. The resistance
is unable to proclaim that it's too busy tweeting, Facebooking, going to meetings,
blogging, networking, paying bills, and traveling. No, actually, it's not busy at all. We're
standing quietly, waiting to applaud our genius as he does his work.
The difference between a successful artist and a failed one happens after the idea is
hatched. The difference is the race to completion. Did you finish?
Anxiety Is Practicing Failure in Advance
Anxiety is needless and imaginary. It's fear about fear, fear that means nothing.
The difference between fear and anxiety: Anxiety is diffuse and focuses on possibilities
in an unknown future, not a real and present threat. The resistance is 100 percent about
anxiety, because humans have developed other emotions and warnings to help us avoid
actual threats. Anxiety, on the other hand, is an internal construct with no relation to the
outside world. "Needless anxiety" is redundant, because anxiety is always needless.
Anxiety doesn't protect you from danger, but from doing great things. It keeps you awake
at night and foretells a future that's not going to happen.
On the other hand, fear is about staying alive, avoiding snakes, feeding your family, and
getting