Steven Pressfield: Sign the Contract

Doing great work is a mix of many things: talent, discipline, love, consistency, obsession, madness, endurance. 

One thing doesn't matter more than another. It's about combining a handful of traits, when exemplified over the long run, to produce what Rick Rubin explains as every artist's goal: timeless excellence.

But an important element about doing great work starts before you even sit down to do the work.

It's the contract you sign.

Before you sit down to chase the dream, write the book, build the company, or do the thing, you must know what you're signing up for. 

Writer Steven Pressfield said it well, 

The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.

No matter how much you love what you do, doing great work, if that is the goal and should be the goal, is a vacation with isolation, misery, and difficulty. When you understand that from the start, you arm yourself to face and overcome the suffering that lies ahead. 

Because suffering will either end your work or create it. And when, from the get-go, you're aware that the work is going to test, challenge, and try to break you, when those moments arrive, you'll be ready.

It won't be easy.

You'll still want to quit.

The doubts will never go away.

But your armor will be ready to take the blows. 

Joyce Carol Oates, one of the most prolific writers alive, said on writing a book,

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.

But the only reason she's produced novel after novel is because she understood from the start the difficulty she was signing up for—she knew the contract she was signing. 

If you want to do great work, before you do the work, you have to know what the work will require—to suffer, to doubt, to feel stuck and confused and empty. 

Before you sit down to create, start the company, write the book, paint the canvas, launch the idea, you must sign the contract. 

Because if you don't, you'll walk away before the work ever gets good.

But if you do and know what you're agreeing to do, you've won half the battle and are well on your way to doing some great work.

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