I finished reading Seth Godin’s excellent Linchpin book recently, and I’ve been reading Steven Pressfield’s War of Art. Both books talk about the Resistance. The Resistance has been beating the hell out of me when it comes to blogging here on my site. I have at least ten draft posts that I’ve started – things that I’ve want to write about for months – but I haven’t finished any of them. Here’s Pressfield on overcoming the Resistance:
Why haven’t I been writing? I used to think of myself as a writer – I wrote tech reviews, tech books, and generally spoke up about whatever I was passionate about. Writing comes fairly easily to me. When I started my job at HTC, that all went away. The job was all-consuming, and along with the adjustment of living in a new country (and a second kid), I didn’t have it in me to write from a time or energy perspective. Since leaving HTC though and moving to AT&T, I’ve achieved a better work/life balance and I have both the time and energy to write…if I really wanted to.
What’s been stopping me? There’s that saying that if you name your fears, you’ll gain some power over them. So here’s why I think I haven’t been blogging, written in the form of what the Resistance has been whispering to me:
- You don’t have a platform of significance to speak from anymore
- You don’t have a tech site or real community any more, so no one will read what you have to say anyway
- You’re a has-been in the tech world, so why would anyone care what you have to say about tech?
- You have nothing worth saying about topics beyond tech anyway, so why bother?
- You don’t have time; there’s that TV show you wanted to watch, that book you wanted to read, those photos you wanted to edit…
To all of the above reasons, and to the Resistance, I say…shut up! I’m going to blog anyway, about whatever I want. I don’t do it for the approval of others; I do it for myself and to contribute small pieces of knowledge and understanding to the world. Head down, pushing forward, I’m going to blog.
What has the Resistance been saying to you?
I find thinking about the process pretty much stops me, so my humble suggestion: don’t go too meta and worry about the process, and blog if you want.
In other words, there’s a huge activation energy if you make it a formalized activity. Keeping it informal is the way to go.