A book that teaches you how to use your daily inspirations as a means to tap into your creativity.
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“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”
– Andre Gide
If you’re searching for a book that will help you tap into your creativity, this is the book for you! In Steal Like An Artist, Kleon helps us unlock our creativity by pulling from the inspirations around us. From music, art, podcasts, books, etc. Kleon helps us to focus more on emulating the art that’s already out there rather than trying to be original.
“Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve.”
-Austin Kleon
Here’s the Main Stuff to Remember:
- Embrace influence instead of running away from it.
- You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with.
- Don’t just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.
Highlights:
- “You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences.
- “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.” p.11
- “Your job is to collect good ideas.”
“Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.”
– Jim Jarmusch
Notes:
Build Your “Role-Model” Tree
Choose a role model, someone you admire, you aspire to be like. “Study everything there is to know about that thinker. Find three people that that thinker loves and find out everything about them. Repeat this as many times as you can. Climb up the tree as far as you can go. Once you build your tree, start your own branch.”
- Imitation is about copying. Emulation is when imitation goes one step further, breaking through into your own thing.
- Follow the best people online – the people who are way smarter and better than you. Pay attention to what they’re talking about, what they’re doing, what they’re linking to.
- Write a blog post about someone’s work that you admire and link to their site.
- Make something and dedicate it to your hero. Improve on their work and share it online.
“Noteworthy Nuggets: Capturing Daily Genius”
- Keep a notebook and jot down things as you go – thoughts, ideas, things you see that spark your interest, etc.
- Keep a logbook of your daily activities. P. 129
Fake It Until You Make It
- Pretend to be something you’re not until you are – fake it until you’re successful, until everybody sees you the way you want them to.
- Pretend to be making something until you actually make something
- All the world’s a stage. Creative work is a kind of theater. The props are your materials and your tools.
“Start copying what you love.
Copy, copy, copy, copy.
At the end of the copy, you will find your self.”
– Yohji Yamamoto
- First you have to figure out who to copy. Second, you have to figure out what to copy.
- Imitation is about copying. Emulation is when imitation goes one step further, breaking through into your own thing.
- Copy your heroes to find yourself. “Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve.”
Practice Productive Procrastination
- “I get some of my best ideas when I’m bored.”
- “Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.”
- Take time to mess around. Get lost. Wander. You never know where it’s going to lead you.
Do good work and share it with people.
- What unifies your work is the fact that you made it. One day you will look back and it will all make sense.
- It’s so important to have a hobby – something you don’t try to make money or get famous off of, you just do it because it makes you happy.
- Step One: Make stuff every day. Know you’re going to suck for a while. Fail. Get better.
Step Two: Share it with people. Put your stuff on the internet. - When you open up your process and invite people in, you learn.
- Think about what you have to share that could be of some value to people.
If you have two or three real passions, don’t feel like you have to pick and choose between them. Keep all of your passions in your life. “Let them talk to each other. Something will begin to happen.”
– Steven Tomlinson
Change Your Scenery
- Quote: “…distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.” – Jonah Lehrer
- Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable. Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder.
“The only mofos in my circle are people that I can learn from.”
– QuestLove
Remember: You’re only going to be as good as the people you surround yourself with.
Additional Gems
- Get a calendar. Fill the boxes. Don’t break the chain. The Jerry Seinfeld Method.
- “Always be reading.”
Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon is available on Amazon.com.
You can also check out more of Austin Kleon’s work by visiting his blog.