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This is the book summary for Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist. These are my notes from the Notion database as it is. My favorite books can be found on this page.
🕐Book Summary in One Line
None of the ideas are original, everything has been said before; great artists don’t know how to make these ideas into their own.
⭐3 Important Lessons
- Be consistent in your creative pursuit
- Don’t copy or imitate; learn from your heroes and see how can you add your own authentic spin to it. In doing so, you will find your own style.
- Have a lot of side-projects and keep switching between them.
📒QUOTES
- When people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past
- 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
- The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life – Jessica Hische
- Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind – Maira Kalman
- You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward – Steve Jobs
- Complain about the way other people make software by making software – Andre Torres
✍🏼LESSONS
- Steal like an artist
- When people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past
- There’s no good or bad – there’s only stuff that’s worth studying and stuff that’s not worth stealing
- Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
- TD note – none of the ideas currently are original. When someone says this is an original thought, they just don’t know the source.
- You are in fact a mashup of what you choose to let into your life
- Garbage in, garbage out – the artist is a collector, not a hoarder. Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists select collectively
- Method for studying – don’t devour an entire subject. Pick a thinker, chew on their ideas and study everything from that thinker. And then move to three another thinkers that the first thinker likes. If you try to study an entire subject, you’ll choke
- School is one thing. Education is another. The two don’t always overlap. Whether you’re in school or not, it’s always your job to get yourself an education – brilliant! Yes school is one thing but you need to get your own education
- Don’t ask a question, before you Google it – you’ll either find the answer or a better question
- Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started
- It’s the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are
- Anybody doing creative work, doesn’t know where the good stuff comes from. They just show up to do their thing, every day
- Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing – Salvador Dali – even Beatles started as a cover band. All artists start somewhere.
- Conan O Brien said it’s our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique- copy your heroes when you fall short, you will start doing your own thing
- Copy your heroes and you will find out where you fall short. Now figure out what’s in there that makes you different. That’s what you should amplify and transform into your own work.
- Don’t copy your heroes, transform their work into your own
- Write the book you want to read
- Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done
- TD notes – what is the thing your heroes are missing – build that.
- Use your hands
- Use paper/pen to generate ideas, digital to edit them
- Side projects and hobbies are important
- Practice productive procrastination – have a lot of projects, when you get bored of one, move to another, when you get bored of that, move back to the first one
- Your best ideas come when you’re bored. Go take a walk, wash dishes, do the laundry, cook. You won’t have those aaha moments while watching an engrossing Netflix show.
- Creative people need time to sit around and do nothing.
- Not everything you do needs to connect. Do stuff that you enjoy. Have a lot of side projects and passions. Let your different hobbies talk to each other, something big will happen.
- Do good work and share with people
- the internet is not only a place to post your finished perfect ideas, it’s a birthing place for new ideas. Make your process public, give away your secret. People love it.
- Wonder at something that no one is wondering at, invite other people to wonder with you – that’s the secret of the internet
- Geography is no longer our master
- You have to find a place that feeds you – mentally, spiritually, socially, creatively, and literally.
- You can build worlds while sitting at home, you don’t have to travel. Build a community on the internet.
- Be nice, the world is small town
- garbage in, garbage out – in the digital space that means following people are more knowledgeable, interesting than you. They are smarter and better than you.
- You need – curiosity, kindness, and the willingness to look stupid
- quit picking fights, and go and make something
- write fan letters to people you follow (or admire) – help them solve a problem, share their thoughts, find answers for them. do something to show your appreciation but don’t expect anything in return.
- Be boring, it’s the only way to get work done
- establishing and keeping a routine can be even more important than having a lot of time
- corollary of Parkinson’s Law – work gets done in the time available
- Creativity is subtraction
- In the end, creativity isn’t just the things we choose to put in, it’s the things we choose to leave out.
- Bonus
- Originality = breadth + depth of sources
- make things for people you love, people you want to meet.
Enjoyed the notes? You can purchase the book from Amazon here.
Note: Some items listed above are Amazon affiliate links. This means I receive a tiny commission if you make a purchase after clicking through some of the images/links above, at no additional cost to you (i.e. the prices don’t change).
