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Steven Pressfield's 'Turning Pro'

Big fan of Steven Pressfield here. Just read his second book Turning Pro, which is a sequel to War of Art…. two MUST reads for any creative. Here are some of my favorite take-aways:

  1. We tend to pursue “shadow careers” – jobs that are similar to our dreams, but not quite our dreams. It’s a metaphor for our true calling.
  2. The life we call normal isn’t normal at all.
  3. Lives go down the tubes … one hundred and forty characters at a time. Twitter is for amateurs.
  4. What are you pursuing that is producing incapacity in your life? What endless loop are you stuck in?
  5. There’s a glamour to failure that’s been mined for centuries, which inverts failure and calls it success. We have settled for the struggle.
  6. The Resistance wants to keep us shallow and unfocused. Have you checked your emial in the last half hour? It can be fatal, keeping up with the Kardashians.
  7. Steven described his “year of turning pro.” It was a year of tremendous sacrifice and focus, but the birth of a fruitful writing career.
  8. The “amateur” fears solitude and silence. Twitter and Facebook are pardise for the amateur.
  9. A Marine gets two salaries for his work. The money for his salary. And the other – his confidence, status, achievement, etc.
  10. Steven described his “years in the wilderness” – years when all of his friends seemed to be getting ahead. But living the “normal life” made him so depressed that he couldn’t stand it.