One of the most useful books I have read on creativity is Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art.  It is a short and clever read on how creative people spend enormous amounts of time and energy resisting their work.  Pressfield defines resistance as any moment when you should be working on your creative project and instead you find yourself avoiding, procrastinating, doubting, or just plain doing laundry.  The ‘War’ in The War of Art is to learn to recognize your own personal form of resistance and then to overcome it.

Resistance is sly.  It masquerades as a necessary diversion, while it slowly eats away at your creative intentions.  Pressfield addresses this brilliantly and suggests that artists give their creative pursuits top priority in their life. Without the creative outlet, the rest of an artist’s life will suffer.  

My battles with my own resistance take many different forms and maybe another time I will discuss them here, but for now, let’s just say that when I wonder what to do on a day off, the answer is never “laundry”.  Then when I get ready to go to work on Monday morning I often wonder “Why didn’t I do my laundry?”–but I don’t mind. I do mind if I did not spend any time on my creative projects.

http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/

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