Do the Verb, Not the Noun
Stop auditing whether you are the thing and radically scale down the daily ask to a positive contribution.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 91%
A method for getting out of identity paralysis. Holiday notes there are two forms of egotism: thinking you are better than everyone, and being so obsessed with how worthless you are that you are still thinking about yourself all day. Both are noun questions. The fix is to replace them with a verb question: not am I a writer, but am I writing. He pairs this with a deliberate downscaling of the daily standard from is the book brilliant to did I make a positive contribution today, which is answerable, controllable and true even on days when the visible output is a single word changed. The identity then follows the choices, because on the Stoic account, making beautiful choices is what makes you beautiful.
Origin
The phrasing comes from Holiday's friend Austin Kleon; the underlying claim that beautiful choices make you beautiful is Stoic, and Holiday applies it to the daily practice of finishing books.
Core principles
- 01Obsessing over how bad you are is still egotism; it is you, all day.
- 02Replace the noun question with the verb question.
- 03If you make beautiful choices you are beautiful; identity follows action.
- 04Radically scale down what you ask of yourself day to day.
- 05You cannot compare the size of two days' contributions, only whether each was made.
How to run it
- 1
Catch the noun question
Notice when the internal question is about status or identity: am I a writer, am I lazy, am I any good, am I worth anything. That question has no action attached to it.
Pro tip Both flavours of egotism are diagnostic: superiority and self-loathing are the same self-focus.
- 2
Restate it as a verb
Convert it to a question about behaviour: am I writing. Then do the thing. Bartlett's addition is that the relationship runs both ways, since you do not do the things you do not believe you are.
Pro tip You are what you do, so the fastest route into the identity is the action.
- 3
Radically scale down the daily ask
Stop asking whether the project is coming together, working or brilliant. Ask only whether you made a positive contribution to it today.
Pro tip This keeps the criterion inside your control on days when nothing is going well.
Watch out Do not smuggle the big question back in as a mood check at the end of the day.
- 4
Refuse to grade the size of the contribution
Some days you move a lot of material; some days you move something a millimetre. You cannot know which mattered more, so score both as the job done.
- 5
Let the accumulation be the answer
Repeated positive contributions are what produce the finished thing, and the finished thing is what settles the noun question you refused to answer directly.
In the wild
Editing his next book, Holiday spent one day writing a new chapter and fixing a great deal of material. The following day he changed a chapter title from look for the good in everyone to find the good in everyone. He calls it a semantic tiny change that is also a transformative change to what he is actually arguing.
→ He cannot say which day had the bigger impact on the project, but both contained a positive contribution, so on both days he did his job.
Holiday describes the person who is not arrogant but is constantly preoccupied with how garbage they are, pointing out that this is its own egotism because they are thinking about themselves all the time. What they should be considering is simply what they are or are not doing.
→ Redirecting to the verb removes the entire self-evaluation loop and leaves an actionable question.
Common mistakes
Auditing the identity instead of the action
Am I a writer is unanswerable and produces no work, while am I writing is answerable and produces the evidence that would have settled the first question anyway.
Setting the daily bar at brilliance
Asking whether today's work was brilliant makes the criterion both unknowable in the moment and dependent on the whole project, which guarantees most days register as failures.
Ranking your days against each other
Deciding a small day was a wasted day punishes precisely the sessions where a tiny change did the heaviest structural work.
Is it for you?
Best for
Writers, makers and anyone stuck in identity questions or perfectionism on long projects with no daily feedback.
Not ideal for
Work where the outcome genuinely is the only thing that matters and daily effort without direction would be wasted.
From the transcript
“do the verb instead of trying to be the noun”
“the Stokes talk about how if you make beautiful choices you are beautiful”
“I try to try to radically scale down what I am asking of myself day to day”
“I know that I made positive Headway positive contributions on both days so I did my job on both days”
From the episode
The Discipline Expert: The 4 Surprising & Easy Habits ALL High Achievers Have! (Based On 2,000 Years Of Research) - Ryan Holiday
The Discipline Expert