Yesterday I looked at the date of my last post here and cringed. It's been over three years. It's worse than looking at the scale on January 1st - and yeah, I'm going to start eating right tomorrow and I really mean it this time.
Category: Writing
I'm pretty sure it's a Law of the Universe that procrastination is caused by an irrational estimate of the size of the task you're avoiding. Getting my book out as an ebook seemed, to me, to be an enormous task.
I'm a List Maker. Perhaps because of my fruitless craving to create order from chaos, I spend Saturday mornings sifting through the mess of my week to figure out what needs doing and what I should just toss in the bin. Plus, I'll admit to a touch of OCD. Not ashamed. Subscribe whole-heartedly to The Law of Straightness.
The beginning of the end. A little while ago, I wrote a book about the psychological elements of sports performance. I wanted to understand how elite athletes were so much better than the rest in the way that they thought, in what they believed and somehow figure out why this made them great. I devoured books and research papers looking for a better answer than just “natural talent”. That didn’t make enough sense to me. I shared parts of the …
The US Tennis Open is disappearing in my rear-view mirror and I'm pushing away the feelings of withdrawal by ...
I’m taking a lot of inspiration from Steven Pressfield’s latest blogs about fighting through Resistance. Writing is just another performance, really, no different from hitting a drive, making a presentation to a cross-armed crowd, cooking a meal. The best stuff comes out when I go thought to thought, moment to moment and hold back that annoying, mean-spirited voice whispering that everything I’m doing is rubbish. That comes later, during the edit or the debrief or the tasting. But now, as …
I wrote 1800 words yesterday. Today: zero. The irony of it all is that I’m trying to write about fear and performance and I can’t get started because I’m afraid it will suck. I should just write it so I can read it and get through this. Getting over myself and just getting started applies to almost EVERYTHING. Related articles by Zemanta Why you fail at writing (scottberkun.com) The despair of the blank page (gointothestory.com)
I realized that there’s been a gap in my postings this summer. I decided to write a book about the psychology of athletic performance. I’ve been a bit heads-down since March and just recently I’ve come up for air, looked around and realized that it’s August. Writing, for me, it’s hard. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I’m having a great time doing it. Stay tuned.
This is an offering of thoughts on the science and psychology of elite human performance. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional tennis player; I was awed by the drama and the skills of Borg, Connors, McEnroe and later by Edberg and Agassi. I wanted to play a part in that sport at the highest level. But, I didn’t. At some point in my early twenties I decided that I didn’t have what it took. And …