Am I going to give up on this book?

Looking back over past posts, I can see that finding motivation to go on with this (very!) long-term project has been a consistent theme.  A few days ago, after a month of holiday when I intended to work on my book a lot and in fact did nothing, I asked myself the crucial question.  Am I going to give up on this book?  I put away all the 'shoulds' and dug deep to find out if I could find any 'wants'.

Helping me in this inquiry was a tool I found in the very good book Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar.  This involved drawing three circles of diminishing size, one inside the other, and writing in each the things I 'want to do', 'really want to do', and 'really, really want to do'.  Tal was taught this approach by an economics lecturer as a way to work out what to do with his life once he left university.  His teacher said that working out what you really, really want to do was the best way to decide what to do with your life.  (And who said economics lecturers had no practical use?!)

To my surprise, in the middle of the inner circle of the 'things I really, really want to do', I put 'write my book on happiness'.  It was clear that when I dug down into what really mattered to me, the book was something I didn't want to give up on, despite all the hassles and delays and patches where I'd rather do ANYTHING than work on it!  I guess it's back to what I said in my very first post - writing a book is a marathon.  Like any marathon runner, I need to dig deep and find ways to keep going and reach my goal.

What happened next was equally surprising.  I went from not having any motivation and doing any work, to waking up filled with eagerness to work on the book, and filled with ideas for ways to restructure it and make progress.  Since doing that exercise I've spent hours of my free time writing up a new table of contents, constructing a new document of chapter summaries, and starting on a revised draft document where I pull together everything I've written so far.  The most exciting thing is that it hasn't felt like work - it's been fun!  I've loved doing it and not wanted to stop.

One other thing helped - I decided to stop pushing myself to work on tasks that I found tedious and uninspiring.  Instead I decided to re-connect with the joy of writing, and only do tasks I felt excited about.  Obviously there are going to be some tasks in every book that are mundane and a pain, but I realised I'd been focusing on those tasks to the point that I fell out of love with the project.  Now I'm back in love again and it feels great!