Steven Pressfield’s distinction between amateur and professional has helped many people change how they relate to their work.
In Turning Pro, the amateur waits for inspiration. The professional shows up when it’s time. Discipline replaces hesitation.
It’s a useful distinction. But it doesn’t fully explain how people relate to their work over time.
I’ve been noticing a third posture—one that isn’t about output or consistency, but about responsibility.
Amateur, Professional… and Something Else
The amateur works from love, but retreats when resistance appears. The professional works from obligation, optimizing for deadlines and expectations. Both are primarily concerned with doing.
The auteur is concerned with authorship.
Not just making the work—but taking responsibility for its voice, its coherence, and the cost of the choices behind it.
That idea sharpened for me while listening to What Went Wrong, particularly their episodes on The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut.
By professional standards, many of those productions sound inefficient: long timelines, endless revisions, mounting pressure. But in some cases, the time wasn’t mismanaged—it was intentionally spent.
Where the professional asks, “Will this work?” The auteur asks, “Is this the work I’m willing to spend my time on—and answer for?”
That distinction matters beyond art. Because how we relate to time often determines whether we’re merely productive—or genuinely productively aligned.
Auteurship isn’t about ignoring limits. It’s about choosing which limits you accept, and which ones you refuse to rush past. And that choice always carries risk. Sometimes it produces something enduring. Sometimes it doesn’t.
The question isn’t whether auteurship works—but whether we’re prepared for what it asks in return.
If this idea resonates, I explore it (and others like it) more deeply in The Lantern, my weekly letter on time, attention, and the quiet shift from productivity to productiveness. You can sign up below to receive it, along with occasional notes designed to help you live and work with more intention, not just more activity.
