Book Review: Do the Work
| Title: | Do the Work |
|---|---|
| Author: | Steven Pressfield |
| Published: | 2011 |
| My rating: |   |
As many, I struggle with staying focused and getting work done. I constantly get distracted, scroll on my phone, obsessively checking email, always finding something else to do, not the work. I simply can’t get work done.
And I am all about getting work done. I believe many of our challenges can be solved by simply doing the work. Doing some work. Just pick something, the smallest of tasks, and get something done. We overthink it too much. When in doubt, do the work.
Is it still a book?
And that was my expectation of this book. I hoped it would give me some advice on how to overcome the resistance to do the work and procrastinate instead. Some routines to help me, or at least get some kick in the butt to go and do something.
But that’s not what this book is about. I am not even sure I would call it a book. It is a collection of ideas and mantras; it feels more like a tweet compilation or transcript of motivation Reels than a book.
It’s one big pep talk. It doesn’t have anything original or groundbreaking. The book is based around an idea that every project can be simplified to three stages - beginning, middle and end.
And that once you have your draft of these three stages, you need to fill the gaps. And after every idea you will encounter resistance that will fight against you. And you need to overcome that resistance and finish your work.
Which is true, but it’s stating the obvious. The author also claims this principle can be used to achieve any endeavour, including building a business. But you can’t split your business into 3 acts, they don’t have start, middle and end.
Such simplified concept works for writing - post, book, or movie. They always have the start and the end, and something in the middle. But business doesn’t work like this.
Somebody described reading this book like “sitting through a bad motivational speech complete with PowerPoint slides and spam-laced marketing buzzwords (the gigantic font words intended to drill the points into my brain)”.
I would agree. It is more motivational or entertainment than education. Whole book is riddled with metaphors and references, which are often sole sources of examples, so if you don’t get them, you can just skip whole pages.
Which is not great when the whole book is not even 100 pages long, of often very few texts. You can finish it in less than an hour. I did.
And the worst thing is the styling of the book. On every page, after every few lines, it jumps between two font sizes, regular and large, and switches alignment of the text to the left and the right.
Every second you get distracted and you have to adjust and realign your focus. I couldn’t really pay attention to the content. It was exhausting. Reading this book literally hurt my brain.
Would I recommend this book?
No. I haven’t got any tangible advice from this book. Not even got motivated. Just skip it.
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