Whenever I didn’t feel like working on the book, instead of sitting down and working on it anyway, I told myself “I’m not feeling motivated today, maybe I’ll feel more like it tomorrow”. Unknowingly, I reinforced the belief that I’m not motivated about the book, that I’m tired of it, and that I should work on something else instead, get my mind off of it for a while, and come back once I feel motivated again.
Excuses sound reasonable
What reinforced that even more was people telling me that taking a break is important and that I shouldn’t overwork myself. Taking a break is good, but breaks can be devastating to a habit if done wrong. At four hours a day, overworking isn’t really the risk here. Your body will naturally want to pull away from the work before that becomes a problem. But “not overworking” is exactly the kind of reasonable-sounding excuse that keeps you from just doing the work.
Everything still depends on you
I’ve noticed the same thing happens once you’ve already built a system or a routine. It’s important not to rely on that system to carry you forward, because the thing that actually brings you closer to your goal is you, not the system you built. I created a lot of systems to help me work on the book, like the live completion counter that shows the exact percentage done that I see every day, or the database of pages that simplifies editing. None of that changes the fact that to actually make progress, I still have to force myself through that first obstacle.
I don’t think that obstacle ever goes away. You just get used to pushing through it, until you don’t even notice you’re doing it anymore. But when you take a break from it for a while, you come back and realize that this whole time you’d been unknowingly breaking down a massive wall of resistance before every session, and now you have to relearn how to do that.
When you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing, but you find an excuse for why it’s fine, that justification is what makes you feel free from having to change it. So make sure you really want to keep it before justifying it.
