A while back, I read the great book “Do the work” by Steven Pressfield. It is short and contains a lot of Tweet-worthy quotes. It is worth reading. You’ll finish it in a weekend.

Why is it so hard to follow trough with things that are good for you in the long term? When working on things like your health, difficult projects, long-term personal growth or integrity, we face resistance. We face resistance in the form of fear, self-doubt, procrastination, distraction, perfectionism, to name a few.

“Rule of the thumb: the more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

The last thing we want is to remain as we are. We want to grow, learn and build meaningful things. That requires hard work and focus on what is good on the longer term. Resistance is going to tell you otherwise. It tells you to stay in bed. It tells you to open Twitter instead of reading a book. You'll have to overcome this yourself.

This book hands you tools to deal with this resistance. Two situations you might be in right now:

You want to start something, but for all kinds of reasons you did not: Start before you’re ready. Don’t prepare. Ignore the voices in your head and what people are saying. There is no better moment than today. We cannot accomplish something until we act.

You started something, but there is always something preventing you to finish: Shipping is scary. There are all kinds of reasons not to follow trough. Resistance is strongest at the finish. Seth Godin said that “finishing is the critical part of any project. If we can’t finish, all our work is for nothing.” Now, I don’t want you to feel guilty. That’s not the goal. Follow trough, beat the resistance and ship it.

Such a good book.