27/30 – What are 3 books everyone should read and why?
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
In this hour-long read, Pressfield masterfully illustrates why it is so hard for us to do the things we know we need to do…Resistance. It is our #1 enemy. It is why we skip the gym, why we hate sitting down to write, why we procrastinate on the projects we need to get done.
You have two lives: the life you’re living and the life you deserve to be living (i.e. the money you should be making, the relationships you want to have, the health you want to experience). The only thing standing in the way of those two lives is Resistance. It tries to kill you every day; and every day, you must unsheathe your sword and slay it like a dragon.
• Deep Work by Cal Newport
Newport has an almost disturbing ability to be perfectly and mathematically articulate with his ideas and arguments. In Deep Work, he highlights the absolute necessity for long, uninterrupted, and focused work. This includes building, learning, creating, writing, etc.
With whatever we’re trying to accomplish, we rarely have a focus problem. We usually have a distraction problem. Meetings. Chit-chat. Phones. Internet. Social media. News…
To get real results, turn all that shit off, go into hiding, and enter a flow state for a few hours.
• Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
It’s impossible to read this beautiful little book without a smile. If you have ever had an inkling to create anything, Kleon implores you to stop thinking and just start making shit. It may in fact be shit, but you owe it to the world to share your ideas, perspective, and creativity. If you don’t feel like you have any of those things, it’s probably because you haven’t ever tried putting it out there and developing it.
A year ago I started a YouTube channel. I had no idea what I was doing, what it would be about, or what value it would bring me or others. Today, I post daily. I get to share my ideas, and improve my storytelling abilities. It’s still super small, but I can feel myself improving and developing my voice, my style, and my rhythm. Start creating. It’ll be terrifying for a million different reasons; but a year from now, you’ll be glad you started today.