The fight against resistance
"Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance." — Steven Pressfield in The Ward of Art.
Hello friends,
There is no shortage of things we want to do. Projects, goals, dreams… things that we know would make us feel happy and fulfilled. Yet, more often than not, we fail to take the first step toward that goal: fighting resistance. Instead, we find a good excuse to avoid it: overthinking the stakes.
I’ve been doing that a lot lately with the blog and the newsletter (among other projects). After a long hiatus, I didn’t really know how to come back, what to write, what to share. So, instead, I kept overthinking what you might be expecting and all the steps it would take before hitting the publish button… all the while not writing a single word.
Resistance is a bitch. But how to fight it?
If I knew the answer for sure, I probably wouldn’t be writing here, right? In the past couple of weeks, however, here is what helped me overcome resistance…
1. Not overthinking everything
While it’s important in some areas, not everything needs to have a plan and be perfect. Sometimes, it’s good to feel the way of the land and just going with your instinct. This week I did that with a coding project and I’m rather surprised by how much I learned and how much progress I made in just a few days.
It’s probably not applicable to all projects, especially not in real-world / business settings, but sometimes it’s good to just explore without a predefined map.
2. Reducing expectations
Not sure who said it first, but I like this quote a lot:
“Expectations are the thief of joy”
While it’s good to be ambitious and have high-quality standards, oftentimes, done is better than perfect. Just like Rome wasn’t built in one day, it’s not realistic to expect to deliver perfect work on the first try. Quite often instead, we need to try and fail, then not be afraid to try again, all the while making sure we learn at every step.
Having too high expectations is what prevented me from doing any progress on my portfolio design/development in the last few months. 90% of the design was made long ago, but my expectations were too high and I couldn’t find that little “je ne sais quoi” that would make it spark. So instead I’ve been procrastinating. Great use of my time, right?
3. Clarifying (and remembering) why
The last thing that helped me was making sure I knew why I was doing things. I genuinely love writing, learning as well as sharing what I learn with other people…. but, I always end up making it a pain for me to do so. Why? Because I focus too much on what other people might be expecting. I focus too much on what I should be doing rather than on why I would want to do it.
Sometimes it’s better to stop wondering about what other people might expect and just… have fun! Life is too short to not do what we love, so we might as well do that. We don’t always have to “bring value” with everything we do or have it all figured out in advance. Sometimes just being who we are is exactly what we need to connect with other people.
So for those who read this far, I would like to ask you something. This week, go and do one thing you have been procrastinating on. Just do it for you, because it brings you joy. And if you feel up for it, just shoot me an email at mathieu@crln.fr! I would love to connect with your craft.
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What I enjoyed lately
🎧 Episode 398 of the design details podcast: “Proof of Curiosity”
🎮 Civilization VI (yes, I know I’m late to the party)
📰 Building a Second Brain: The Illustrated Notes by Maggie Appleton
🔗 Laurie Barth’s posts and tweets on Javascript trivia
🎶 I Truly Loved Ya by Selah Sue. I’ve been loving the voice of Selah Sue for more than a decade now and I still can’t get enough of it. Happy she is touring again in Europe. Hopefully, she will come to Canada soon 🇨🇦
What I’m working on these days
Besides slowly getting my way back to reading and writing, these days most of my attention is on web development projects!
Nova Workflows
Currently playing around with NextJS, Firebase, and ChakraUI to make myself a little app to automate my various workflows with Notion, Todoist, Toggle, and other apps as an alternative to Zapier/Automate.io. I only plan it for my personal use (so no plans to publish it), but it’s an amazing opportunity to learn and develop my skills.
Audiophile E-commerce
Also working on one of Frontendmentor’s latest challenges. For those who might be trying to improve their skills in frontend development, FrontendMentor is an amazing resource. I’m still far from being done with it but my repo is freely accessible on Github.
Lastly, if everything goes well and I follow the advice I gave in this newsletter, I should be giving you more details about my portfolio progress by next week.
Until next week, stay safe! ✌🏾
Mathieu Céraline.