Just want to take a moment to say how great it has been to meet weekly with Michael Ashcroft over the past many months.

In my life, I’ve had a dozens of coaches, therapists, and mentors, each of whom has been helpful in some way.

But Michael is on to something goofy…

I refuse to draw conclusions from such a small data set, but I anticipate that soon I will report some of the most dramatic, sustainable creative progress I’ve ever had in my life.

Granted, much of it has little to do with Michael’s Alexander Technique mumbo-jumbo, and yet…

I’m a guy who has basically been yelling at himself for his entire adult life, attempting to generate output: MAKE THINGS, ZACHARY, YOU KNOW HOW AND LIKE TO DO IT SO WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOURSELF?!

I’m the opposite of Johnny Five from Short Circuit: I need Output.

I’ve learned dozens of skills/trades, read all the productivity books, developed nuanced opinions about the efficacy of different systems, methods, and lifehacks. I’m a very lucky guy with a great life… but I’ve been creatively unfulfilled. I wrote a bit about that here: zachphillips.blog/2020/08/h…

I stayed up deep into the night reading, watching, listening to the secrets of the Masters and how they were able to get their creative spark to generate real fire.

The harder I pressed, the less I actually created and the worse I felt.

This is similar to my experience with addiction (18 years sober). The harder I tried to NOT do drugs (which I wanted more than anything), the more drugs I did, until it almost killed me.

The only way to stop drugs was to stop trying to not do them. Which took a LOT.

“Surrendering” to the fact that I would not be able to will myself to stop drugs took a total rearrangement of my life, psychology, spiritual shit… but more than a decade later, I guess I never considered that the same approach could be taken to my “VERY IMPORTANT WORK.”

Then I met Michael Ashcroft, and he was talking about some shit that seemed to relate to the Buddhist meditation practice I’d been doing for some years, but he was talking about applying Non-Doing to WORK.

Huh? How can you Non-Do the Work You Must DO?

Anyway, I’m not going to make any grand declarations before all the facts are in, but it’s beginning to appear that, indeed, you not only can, but MUST (if you’re like me) Non-Do your work. And perhaps suddenly you will find yourself producing a lot. And feeling happy.

If you are sick like me in this very specific way that I appear to be sick, I can’t recommend enough that you read @m_ashcroft’s writings and take his course (even though I haven’t taken the course yet… that’s how well this shit is working for me… I don’t even need the course).