I’d seen multiple recommendations for this book and ended up buying it. The subtitle is “break through the blocks and win your inner creative battles” which is indeed the goal of the book. It’s quite a short book with each chapter typically only being a page or two at most. It comes in three parts and the first part is about the concept of resistance. Resistance is this invisible force that prevents you from completing your task. It comes in many forms, but that’s the main idea. The first part merely identifies resistance and how pervasive it is, but doesn’t really answer why.
Part two of the book is about becoming a pro. Truly, that is the only advice to beating resistance, be a pro. It’s quite simplistic advice as it’s basically taking a different mindset to your work. Simply treat the work like it’s your job. Show up and do it. That’s it. That’s how you beat resistance. No excuses, just get it done.
Strangely enough, part three might be the most interesting. Part three is about the “higher realm”. It gets quite mystical as it talks about muses and God and all that sort of stuff. I’m not really a believer in that stuff, but I can translate a lot of it into something more practical. There is an interesting discussion around Ego and I immediately recognized it as the conscious part of your brain, which isn’t truly that intelligent, versus the subconscious part of your brain which is much more intelligent in a lot of ways. Hearing the muses is really the act of tapping into your subconscious brain.
If you use your Ego, your conscious brain, to focus on something, your subconscious brain will start to focus on that task as well. Your dumb Ego needs have that professionalism to get to a task and allow your smart subconscious to focus on it. If you do that, ideas will start to flow and you’ll break through those blocks.
The author himself goes a lot more mystical. However, he does also touch on purpose. Why are you doing your art? Is it to fit in a hierarchical structure and improve your standing? If so, he doesn’t believe you’ll ever hear your muse. Instead, he suggests finding your territory, or I’d say “your calling”. Something that you’d do if you were the last person on Earth.
Overall, I think the book is quite interesting, though simplistic and too mystical for my tastes. Still, I think the simple advice is quite good and it’s quite short, so I’ll likely re-read this book to let the advice sink in. That’s a pretty good endorsement.