Merlin Mann's speeches and podcasts about the struggle of creation are often frenetic but wonderful. I can't decide if he's giving us the speech, or if he's delivering it to himself while we listen in. It's obvious that creation isn't sort of abstract study for him. He speaks from hard-won knowledge. He's created many wonderful things, and just as famously failed to create some wonderful things.

My most impactful advice to friends were all lessons that I had learned the hard way. They were so well polished because I had run through the words many times. The words were spinning around my mind in the shower, on the drive home, in front of the TV, and when I should have been working. Some of Merlin's lessons sound so polished you know he must be living them.

Merlin's main lesson is also his most inspiring trait: tenacity. He's still at it. He's read all the books, and heard all the platitudes. For a time he even wrote those platitudes on 43folders.com — before its liberation. And as a child of the productivity industry, he'll tell you that it comes down to hard work.

That's the voice of experience. Of persistence. Of trying one silver bullet after another and finding they're all just balls of lead.

Even though there are a thousand ways to illustrate, it's still a single lesson to learn. Merlin can cover it over and over again, in different ways, for hours. It's redundant but never boring, and if you struggle with creation the lesson is something you can't hear too often. It may be the only real lesson you need to learn, if you really learn it. It's to pick something actually important and then do the hell out of it.