Tag: plans

Book review – The war of art , Break through the blocks and win your inner creative battles.

I am reading more frequently nowadays and increasingly run into fun and interesting books, in this case a book written by Steven Pressfield, primarily a fiction writer. I had never read anything from him and came across this book in a search for better managing my projects and the aspiration for big(ger) goals in life than I previously aspired.

The war of art is about the resistance within ourselves to give into our own (creative) goals. The creative between accolades because it is also perfectly applicable for the non artists among us. And moreover a lot of professions and goals you want to achieve require a high degree of creative and artistic thinking to materialize.

It’s about overcoming your own internal blockages , the resistance that leads to procrastination , seeking distraction and basically doing anything but get started on the stuff you like to do most.

Writing that book, making that music album, starting your own business, going for that one study you always dreamt about. The first part of the book goed into that resistance and how it manifest itself.

The second part of the the book is about overcoming the resistance and what it takes to stay productive on a constant level over a long period of time.

The final part is about inspiration and how it manifests itself. The book is very compactly written and it has a lot of the known elements of getting things done which are mentioned. Start now and keep at it, which we all know deep down.

But this book describes it in a wat that keeping busy and the overcoming of the resistance is very simple all of a sudden. No extra complicated descriptions and elaborate plans, no simplicity. A nice and elegant solution for getting things done. And it reads like a breeze.

Experiments , traveling by plane

Last month I did another experiment if you like, on how far I can go travel wise. It had been time for a good old fashioned holiday for some time. After successful small trips and lessons learned it was decided , flying with destination Tenerife, Canary Islands.

The B&B and the small town we stayed in were both familiar from previous visits , so the adjustment period should be minimal. Normally this was just the start of the trip or the end right after or before flying in or out. Now we would stay the week and see how things unfold.

The weeks before I was very nervous and anxious about the whole enterprise. What if I was forced too stay in bed the whole week. Things just didn’t sit well with me. Went anyway.

We booked a hotel near the Airport to cut the traveling in little bites so I could rest a bit more. Early morning flight so we took a cab to the airport, dropped our luggage and took our time. After boarding we had the furthest possible runway , the first few hours went pretty well, in the last hour my mind couldn’t keep up and I could not free myself out of the noise, movement and pressure.

Luckily we landed and the sun was shining, took a taxi towards the B&B and our room was almost ready. My initial expectation was that this was a crash moment. Luckily my afternoon sleeping breaks covered the fatigue and mental problems pretty well. So we enjoyed the village , food and sun and relaxed.

The first half of the week the afternoon naps proved too be sufficient enough , added we didn’t do much besides them anyway and all went well, the second half of the week sleeping wasn’t enough anymore. So the crash moment came later then expected.

In the second half we enjoyed a public transport trip to the capital of Tenerife and with a final meal at our favorite restaurant it was time for the flight home.

It was very good to be out of the country and having a ‘real’ holiday. Simply being abroad just adds to the overall holiday feeling.

It was a mixed bag in terms of my condition, before the trip I anticipated the first half to be a problem, which turned out to be the second half, and compared too out previous holiday’s we didn’t do a lot. It’s an adjustment I need to get my head around. One week of not doing much and just enjoying food sun and relaxation I can manage but after that I would like too see more of the place I am visiting.

After coming home I had troubles I finding my rhythm again , being tired and not committing enough time to rest. All in all a lot of lessons learned and perhaps I’ll have another go in the future. Never stop trying, and exploring , as they say at a famous outdoor brand.