Book Highlights: Steal Like An Artist (Austin Kleon)

This book taught me the art to be a good artist.

📙 About The Book

Title: Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
Author: Austin Kleon

🙋 Who Should Read It?

Anybody who is wondering how to generate ideas and leverage their creativity to create meaningful content should read it.

👀 Impressions

This is a concise book that can give you some good ideas and action items on how you can generate ideas and leverage your creativity to create meaningful content, products, etc. I particularly loved the fact that I did not have to spend too much time reading this book as the author kept it brief and to the point with good images that were worth a thousand words. The points that the author wanted to communicate are very clear and presented in simple language.

💡 Key Points and Ideas

It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.

1: Steal like an artist

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again. — Andre Gide (French writer)

• Nothing is completely original and all creative work builds on what came before.
• You are the sum of your influences so choose them wisely.
• Do not collect stuff indiscriminately i.e. be a collector and not a hoarder.
• Choose a thinker and find thinkers that this thinker loved to build your own tree of thinkers. Once your tree is built, start your own branch.
• Try to Google everything. In this way, you’ll either find the answer to your question or you’ll come up with a better question.
• Always carry a notebook and pen or any appropriate resource to save your thefts for later.

2: Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started

• Impostor Syndrome is natural. Don’t be scared of it. Just show up to do your thing. Every day.
• Creative work is a kind of theater. Pretend to be what you want to be until you are what you want to be.
• Do not indulge in plagiarism. Instead, indulge in copying. Copying is about reverse engineering. Figure out who to copy and then figure out what to copy.
• Try not to copy from one author because that’s plagiarism. Copy from many, then it’s research.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. — Salvador Dali

3: Write the book you want to read

• Don’t write what you know, write what you like. e.g. if you read a story and you have a thought for what would make a better story, write that better story yourself. In simple words, do the work you want to see done.

4: Use your hands

• Step away from your laptop when you are generating ideas because there are too many opportunities to hit the delete key. You will realize that this leads to editing ideas before you even have them. Laptops are only good for editing or publishing your work not for generating ideas.

5: Side projects and hobbies are important

• Practice productive procrastination. Take time to mess around and get lost. Wander. You never know where it’s going to lead you.
• Keep all your passions. Don’t discard any of them.
• Have a hobby because it gives you happiness without taking anything in return.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. — Steve Jobs

6: The Secret: Do good work and share it with people

• In the beginning, obscurity is good because when you’re unknown, there’s nothing to distract you from getting better.
• Leverage the internet. It can be an incubator for ideas that aren’t fully formed and a birthing center for developing work that you haven’t started yet.
• If you are worried about giving your secrets away, you can share your dots without connecting them. Control how much you reveal.

7: Geography is no longer our master

• You don’t have to live anywhere else than the place you are to start connecting with the world you want to be in.
• Leave home and travel to different places to get exposure to how people do things differently than you.
• You have to find a place that feeds you — creatively, socially, spiritually, and literally.

8: Be nice. (The world is a small town.)

• Ignore your enemies on the internet and make friends by saying nice things about them.
• Surround yourself with people who are doing really interesting work.
• If you ever find that you’re the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.
• Get angry when you see some stupid stuff out there and you feel the need to correct it. But keep your mouth shut and go do your work.
• Write public fan letters on the Internet and show appreciation without expecting anything in return.
• Get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored — the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.
• Instead of keeping a rejection file, keep a praise file. Don’t get lost in past glory but keep it around for when you need the lift.

9: Be boring. (It’s the only way to get work done.)

• Take care of yourself and stay out of debt. Learn about money as soon as you can. Make yourself a budget and live within your means.
• Keep a day job because that will put you in the path of other human beings. Learn from them, steal from them. It will take some time away from you but it gives you a routine in which you can schedule a regular time for your creative pursuits.
• Get yourself a calendar because that helps you plan work, gives you concrete goals, and keeps you on track.
• Also, keep a logbook to keep track of your past events.
• Marry well and maintain good relationships with those who are obsessed with creative pursuits and those who keep you grounded.

10: Creativity is subtraction

• Choose what to leave out so that you can focus on what’s important.
• Embrace your limitations and keep moving.

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