There is a select list of books I re-read regularly. Stephen Pressfield’s The War of Art, is on that list.

Pressfield’s background is an interesting one. He bounced around various jobs including truck driving and copywriting while trying to make it as a professional author. For a period, he was homeless and living out of the back of his car. Success didn’t arrive until the age of 52 when his first novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance was published.

Pressfield’s road to success led him to write The War of Art. Specifically, he wanted to write a guide from his own process and discovery on how to transform from an amateur into a professional in any endeavor. Don’t take the word “art” literally. The book isn’t just for artists, but athletes, entrepreneurs or anyone who wants to be great at anything by developing the mindset of the professional.

How does he suggest developing the mindset of the professional?

I highly recommend you reading the book, but the essential point is the following. To go from an amateur to a professional you must overcome resistance, the self-sabotaging inner force that blocks all of us from fulfilling our creative endeavors.

Like most things, it sounds simple but it’s not easy.

Resistance shows up differently for all of us and I see it often in myself and the business owners and founders I advise.

Going pro, as Pressfield describes in the book, isn’t about becoming more talented or working harder, but instead changing your relationship with the work itself.

For anyone running a business it’s especially relevant.

Resistance, according the Pressfield, is the thing standing between you and the work of a professional. Resistance rarely presents itself as “do nothing”. Quite the opposite. You have energy to start the business, make the sales calls, or do whatever tasks you know “professional you” should do. Since nature abhors a vacuum, the energy must go somewhere. So what does the purveyor of resistance, your ego, do with that energy? It channels it into distractions, procrastination, avoidance, and many other energy diffusing activities.

The mechanics of resistance reminds me of Rube Goldberg Machines, made famous in cartoons. These machines perform numerous, sequential tasks to perform a basic, often needless function. Way more energy, time, and planning are put into the system to perform the task than necessary. Sound familiar?

The Rube Goldberg Machine of resistance might sound like:

Whenever you have work you know you need to do, your ego creates a multi-step machine to diffuse your energy and derail you.

Rube Goldberg Machines are ridiculous. Resistance machines are not. Hidden in them can be important sounding work like doing more research, checking email, re-organizing your CRM, or tweaking the website.

They look productive but ultimately aren’t. Tweaking your website won’t make the follow-up sales calls that directly lead to more revenue.

How do you dismantle the resistance machines your ego so often wants to build for you?

Let the resistance help you find the work you should be doing.

What work do you know you should be doing but continually avoid?

I’ve found for myself and my clients that resistance usually appears in four work categories:

The ego hates for us to make decisions because we might be wrong. That’s when it throws up resistance. But no decision doesn’t mean no outcome. It’s just your ego fooling you into believing you won’t be responsible for whatever happens. Not deciding is a decision. You’re responsible no matter what. So go ahead and raise your prices, kill the product, change your strategy or fire the person you should have let go months ago.

Selling, asking, pitching, networking are all opportunities to get rejected. Your ego might hate this more than being wrong.

Notice when you need to accomplish any work related to exposing yourself, how suddenly there are excuses, tasks to be completed, or a sudden shift in priorities.

Poet Eddie Vaga once quipped, “Somebody should start a house cleaning business staffed with writers who are on a deadline.”

When it comes to reviewing financials or following-up with potential leads, it’s easy for the ego to provide an alternative bright shiny object. Especially if it’s in an area you naturally enjoy working in. You know you need to document critical processes but you decide designing the next feature in your product is more important.

Often, things like cleaning your house are literally more enjoyable. The mundane is easy work for the ego.

Commitments are related to decisions but the ego hates them even more. A commitment is a decision to focus on one thing at the exclusion of others. If you choose one market to pursue, you have to ignore others. Picking one strategy leaves the others behind.

The ego responds, “What about these other bright shiny objects?” Sometimes having more options is a good thing. However, often it’s our egos fooling us into overvaluing optionality.

Here is a simple framework for overcoming resistance and getting done what your business needs for success.

The the activities and behaviors that belong at the top of your list are the ones from the above categories that generate the most resistance.

If doing the activity consistently for the next year would materially change your business, you know it belongs on the list.

I often find myself saying something like, “I need to do more outbound.” Re-reading War of Art reminds me to reframe it to, “I contact five prospects before 10 a.m. every weekday.” See the difference? One is a suggestion while the second statement is a command. There’s no negotiating the latter.

Usually the discomfort of doing the work is more imagined than reality. Resistance can be a signal to re-consider a decision or course of action. Usually it’s just your ego getting in the way.

I try to remain aware of whether reality has changed or just my emotional state. The best way to test it and to operate through the discomfort is to simply begin.

The 10-Minute Rule is a great way to overcome resistance and operate through discomfort. Set a timer for 10 minutes with the intention that at the end of the period you can quit. I almost never do. The 10 minutes is enough to overcome the inertia and enter into a focused state.

Going Pro is working more effectively instead of working more on the work your ego is using to distract you.

Write down the following:

An example:

You don’t need another productivity system. You need to remove the distraction system your ego builds every day to keep you from realizing your greatest potential.

My goal with The Leap is to provide you each Saturday with the knowledge, tools and lessons learned to help you get started and keep going toward building your future. 

Whether you are making the leap to startups, solo-entrepreneurship, freelancing, side hustles or other creative ventures, the tools and strategies to succeed in each are similar.