To be upfront, I was disappointed by the overly mystical/magical ending to The War of Art (useless to me), but a friend assured me that Do The Work was free of that, so I gave it a look.
Pressfield may not be talking about his imaginary friends in the sky this time, but he still loads the book with bits of little wisdom that he turns into foolishness by taking them way too far, to their willfully illogical conclusions. Metaphors about babies and bathwater come to mind.
For example he declares, "Bad things happen when we employ rational thought." Er... no. Bad things happen when we let rational thought stop us from being creative, but that's not the same thing. And bad things also happen when we ignore rational thought altogether in favor of instinct.
A little bit later he cites Lindbergh, Jobs, and Churchill as "stupid" because that's the only way they would have undertaken the seemingly impossible things they did. Um... no. First, that's not stupidity, it's foolhardiness or naïvete; a writer should know the difference. Second, they weren't naïve, either. Jobs understood what he was up against when he returned to Apple; he was just arrogant enough to believe he was up to the task (which Pressfield appropriately praises) and smart enough, analytical enough, critical enough to be right (which is where Pressfield is wrong).
Pressfield sees people doing things like overthinking or ignoring their instincts or being too self-critical (which are all real problems), and then failing (which is what happens), so he apparently concludes that you should *not* think, *always* trust your instincts, *never* listen to your doubts, etc. When the real solution is Balance. Think things thru, but don't obsess about them. Listen to your instincts, but examine their assumptions. Listen to your doubts, but don't let them paralyze you. So read Pressfield's little bits of wisdom if they motivate you, but don't put a metaphorical icepick through the left hemisphere of your brain as he suggests.
Now, I'm no movie-adapted novelist, and I don't have the key to success. But one thing I do know is failure. And it's come at least as often from the don't-think-about-it mindset that Pressfield endorses in this book as from the mindset he's trying to counteract. Every time, the post mortem has indicated that I should've done a bit more of one or the other, not that reason or instinct itself was the enemy. I wasn't taking full advantage of both kinds of thinking. Which is precisely what Pressfield's book encourages.
There are some good motivating ideas to be found in this book, just like there was in War of Art. But having to wade thru mushy-headed stuff like those bits I quoted, just to find that stuff, isn't worth the trouble. Especially when you have Work To Do.
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
