Mark Manson on progress

“Learning can feel like progress, even when it’s not progress.”

Mark Manson

Mark Manson from this video Why Your Favorite Self-Help Book Sucks.

He’s specifically talking about the self help space, where people frequently use “learning as a replacement for doing”, but I couldn’t help but think about how many times I’ve used “learning” as a replacement for creating. And I use the term “learning” very loosely. Note the sarcastic quotation marks.

Scrolling the internet for hours, telling myself I’m keeping up with the news, or researching some pen, or how to make a living from selling art, or whatever. It’s all terribly important.

I’m rolling my eyes at myself, you can’t see it, but it’s really annoying.

For me it’s not even just learning, it’s doing anything else as a replacement for creating. Like that time last week I decided suddenly it was the most important thing in the world to upload all my comics from 18 years ago to this website instead of working on a new comic. Or the week before that when I decided redesigning this website was the most important thing ever, instead of working on a new comic. Or really anything instead of working on a new comic.

I suppose it’s all a variation of procrastination? I don’t know, I’ll look it up later.

Anyway, back to drawing something, before writing this blog post becomes a replacement for working on a new comic.