Book: The War of Art

The War of Art (Amazon) is a book that could only have been written by a white religious man. Note: generally not the demographic I’m seeking reading materials from. The first two parts are essentially about a puritanical work ethic. The third part is some spiritual woo woo about creativity, and includes a little section on how people who embrace their dreams sometimes see their cancer go into remission – wtf, this is such harmful, ridiculous victim blaming.

I hated it. But perhaps the issue for me is that I don’t need a pep talk to work hard. So it talks about sitting down and doing stuff and I’m like…. check. And then it grow on and on and on about sitting down and doing stuff and elaborate excuses that can be made but… this isn’t really an issue I have, so I was just annoyed. And then it got into the spiritual nonsense and I was just like… this is an hour of my life I’ll never get back. It reads more like a medium series that I would abandon two posts in than an actual book available on printed paper.

Conclusion: if you feel like what you need is brutal tough love from a dude lacking in empathy, this is your jam. If not, there are almost an infinite number of books to read instead. For productivity, I would start with 168 Hours.