Every large scale creative endeavor, from writing a book to building a body of work, creating a collection or a company, is made up of dozens, maybe even hundreds or even thousands of smaller scale benchmarks, along with the “pushes” it takes to hit each.
Every time you hit a benchmark, it feels great. You get to ease off the push and check a box that takes you one step closer to your ultimate quest.
But, then, there’s also a potential dark side to hitting these micro-goals. There’s a break in the momentum. You have to rally yourself to start the push toward the next one fresh. To write the next chapter, start the next canvas, produce the next song, build the next piece of your entrepreneurial greatness.
And, the closer you get to end of the bigger endeavor, the more the voice of internal Resistance, as Steve Pressfield described it in The War of Art, rises up and tries to derail you from your work.
I’ve experienced this while writing books in the past. So, when I was working on my next one, I decided to try a momentum hack that I learned from none other than Ernest Hemingway.
Stop when you most want to go.
I share the details and the powerful results in today’s short and sweet GLP Riff.
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