The hardest thing I have done is write my first book.
I’ve done some hard things in my day but it all seems easy relative to writing The Guide.
Of course it would have been easier if I could actually write! But even then writing is notoriously hard.
There are many quotes from writers, such as Dorothy Parker’s, “I hate writing, I love having written.”
And in perhaps the best book on this subject, The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield writes:
“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”
Over time it got fun for me as I learned to stop thinking too much.
So rather than sitting down to write, and thinking about writing, and thinking about what I just wrote, and analyzing words, and sentences, and paragraphs, instead you learn to get in the flow and keep moving.
Writer of the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming, said, “Never look back, if you look back you are sunk, just keep writing, the story is everything.”
Like a fat kid on skis, once you have momentum it is easy to keep going.
And if you keep going, you will keep making progress.
And if you keep making progress, you will inevitably finish.
Whether it be improving your career, changing your job, transforming your life, or any other project, sitting down and getting started is the most important and often the hardest part.
Like writing a book and thinking about the thousands of pages of mess in front of you, you can become over-whelmed and fail to take any steps.
Yet a book comes together by working at it consistently day by day and getting what you want happens the same way.
Just f’n get going!