I remember the first 30 days or so when I started this blog.
Each post was like pulling teeth.
I’d sit there. Write something. Stall.
Sometimes I’d fill the day push this thing back until late that night, and then stretch myself to get “something” out.
Don’t get me wrong – writing a blog still requires thought and it still takes time.*
Fortunately though, a shift occurred.
Some context: I can be a serious person. Not always, but that streak is in me: maybe a bit of nature, maybe a bit of nurture… who knows: I think it’s from my Dad’s side.
Anyway, for the “serious” person, this shift that can happen is a little paradoxical. It turns out, when we stop taking ourselves and our work so seriously, it rapidly improves.
And “rapid” is the key word there.
When we drop the seriousness around the work, the speed at which we can create goes up, and thus the rate of improvement goes up.
Way up.
The moment you take yourself too seriously – the moment “self importance” creeps back in – you again become what Steven Pressfield calls “the amateur.”
This is because “the amateur” doesn’t do the work.
Self importance is the fuel to freeze, to lock up, and to push that blog post back until 11pm that day.
What does it look like to still combine thought, work ethic and innovation with a “let-go” and playfulness?
How would being able to create faster change the volume, output and ultimately quality of what you are doing?
*more on that trick in another post
