Quotes About Focus

overthink. Don't overprepare. Don't let research become Resistance. Don't spend six months compiling a thousand-page tome detailing the emotional matrix and family history of every character in your book. Outline it fast. Now. On instinct. Discipline yourself to boil down your story/new business/philanthropic

A pro views her work as craft, not art. Not because she believes art is devoid of a mystical dimension. On the contrary. She understands that all creative endeavor is holy, but she doesn't dwell on it. She knows if she thinks about that too much, it will paralyze her. So she concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods.

The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them, she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers.

The Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they. —Plutarch

Tremendous power lies in the simple, physical act of stationing our body at the epicenter of our dream. There is magic in putting our ass where our heart wants to be.

It's not the writing part that's hard, it's the sitting down to write. What's keeps us from sitting down, is resistance.

Let the unconscious do its work. Research can become Resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work.

There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What

He meant don't overthink. Don't overprepare. Don't let research become Resistance. Don't spend six months compiling a thousand-page tome detailing the emotional matrix and family history of every character in your book. Outline it fast. Now. On instinct.

In this book, when I say "Don't think," what I mean is: don't listen to the chatter. Pay no attention to those rambling, disjointed images and notions that drift across the movie screen of your mind.

Do research early or late. Don't stop working. Never do research in prime working time. Research can be fun. It can be seductive. That's its danger. We need it, we love it. But we must never forget that research can become Resistance.

When we've got David Lean's eight sequences, we're home except for one thing: The actual work. Cover the Canvas One rule for first full working drafts: get them done ASAP.

Don't worry about quality. Act, don't reflect. Momentum is everything. Get to THE END as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork. Believe me, he is. Get the serum to Nome. Get the Conestoga wagon to the Oregon Trail. Get the first version of your project done from A to Z as fast as you can.

The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you're finished. The pro doesn't even pick up the phone. He stays at work.

There's no mystery to turning pro. It's a decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our mind to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.

So she concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods.

Procrastination is the most common manifestation of resistance.

If we were the last person on earth, would we still show up at the studio, the rehearsal hall, the laboratory?

Resistance hates two qualities above all others: concentration and depth. Why? Because when we work with focus and we work deep, we succeed

The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working. Short of a family crisis or the outbreak of World War III, the professional shows up, ready to serve the gods.

But another lesson Watashi taught has stuck with me to this day. Watashi always pronounced the word "feel" as if it had quotation marks around it. In other words, he scorned the word absolutely. In Watashi's lexicon, feel and feelings had no meaning in war. They had no meaning in competition. They had no meaning in life.

This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don't. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.

The professional blows critics off. He doesn't even hear them. Critics, he reminds himself, are the unwitting mouthpieces of Resistance and as such can be truly cunning and pernicious. They can articulate in their reviews the same toxic venom that Resistance itself concocts inside our heads. That is their real evil. Not that we believe them, but that we believe the Resistance in our own minds, for which critics serve as unconscious spokespersons.

I sometimes thought to myself, Steve, you've got it lucky now, no distractions, you can focus full-time. What are you gonna do when life gets complicated again?