Table of contents
“Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don’t come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.”
Austin Kleon
Steal Like An Artist gives us permission to copy our heroes’ work and use it as a springboard to find our own, unique style, all while remembering to have fun, creating the right work environment for our art and letting neither criticism nor praise drive us off track.
This fun little book is filled with awesome quotes from great people, and Austin Kleon's own interesting experiences in stealing work from others (stealing with honor, mind you, not the shady kind)
I'm extremely excited to share this book with you. Let's get started!
🌈 3 Sentence Summary
- No one has 100% original ideas, so we must take ideas from our heroes and transforming it into something new. All while attributing them properly and adding our own personal twist to it.
- First figure out who to copy, then figure out what to copy (don't hoard). Amplify the areas where you fall short of trying to copy your heroes, because it is this failure that makes you special and gives you your own individuality.
- Do good work and share it with people. Carve our own space on the internet. If our work isn't on the internet, it doesn't exist.
💡 Thoughts
This book is one of the reasons why I created a website to dump my thoughts onto. I liked the idea of copying with dignity, by remixing ideas and adding our own contribution to further develop the idea into something new. This means I don't have to be an expert first before creating something valuable, I can learn as I go.
Since then, I've embraced the idea of "I'm a fellow student here to share what I've learnt along the way, and hopefully you'll get some value out of this", instead of "I'll spend years training to be an expert first before sharing my work".
I've also started carving my little space on the internet where I think in public. I find that it's an awesome way to organize my thoughts, with the added benefit of attracting discussions with people who are also interested in the stuff that I like.
👤 Should You Read It?
I'd highly recommend this to... everyone really. It has so much value packed into such a fun 30 minute read that there is really no reason not to. You'll probably enjoy it more if:
- If you're interested in creative work or entrepreneurship of any sort.
- If you're thinking of attracting people who love the same things you do.
- If you're still waiting around to "discover yourself". Just get going!
🚀 Actionable takeaways
- Make a swipe file, a spark file, and a praise file.
- Get a domain (www.yourname.com), and start wondering at something.
- Write the story of your life. Tell it to people. It gets better and cleaner after every repetition.
- Develop your own productivity system.
- Travel somewhere. Get inspired.
✍️ Summary + Notes
🎨 1. Steal like an artist
"What is originality? Undetected plagiarism."
William Ralph Inge
Find one thinker you really love, study everything there is to know about that thinker. Then find 3 people that thinker loved, and find out everything there is to know about them. Go deeper than anybody else, that's how you'll get ahead.
After understanding the way your heroes think, take their ideas and transform them into your own. Put your stamp of originality on it, and show it to the world. Make sure to meticulously attribute the idea back to where you found it, both as a thank you and as a way to help your audience dig deeper into what they love.
Keep a spark file. Save stuff inside every time you're inspired by something, and look back into it once every few months.
⌛ 2. Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started
Fake it 'till you make it.
First, find out who to copy. Second, figure out what to copy.
Finding out who to copy is easy, copy our heroes. The people we love, the people who inspire us, the people we aspire to be.
Figuring out what to copy is a little more tricky. Copy the things that you like into a swipe file, You'll never know when inspiration hits and stuff from that swipe file becomes useful. Collect stuff, don't hoard.
📖 3. Write the book you want to read
Don't write what you know, write what you like.
Write the story you like best, write the story you want to read. When you're at a loss in life and career, ask ourselves: "What would make a better story?"
We are smack in the middle of our life story. We don't know where we are, and how it ends. This is why there's so much noise and so much confusion.
The good news is we can write our own story. We are extremely motivated by narratives, so pick and choose events from our lives and create a good story. Tell people what happened in the past, that led to the present, and where we want to go in the future (and maybe how they can help us).
You'll be amazed how many people are willing to cheer you on (and even contribute to the story!)
🖐 4. Use your hands
“If you have space, set up two workstations, one analog and one digital.”
I'm a dental student, and I love working with my hands. But nowadays, it seems like everything must be done with my laptop for the sake of interconnectivity.
Computers are great for editing/publishing ideas, but not so great for generating ideas. It's great for text documents, not so great for drawing diagrams and mind maps.
Computers also bring out the perfectionists in us. It's too easy to hit delete. We start editing ideas before we even have them.
🎲 5. Side projects and hobbies are important
"It's the side projects that really take off."
Take time to mess around. Get lost. Wander. You never know where it’s going to lead you.
Don't give up on any of your passions. It’s good to have a lot of projects going at once so you can bounce between them. When you get sick of one project, move over to another, and when you’re sick of that one, move back to the project you left.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.”
Steve Jobs
One of the steps of the creative process is incubation. Let an idea simmer in the back of our minds for some period of time, and when we finally get back round to it, you'll be pleasantly surprised at how many more ideas and insight we'll have on the topic.
🙋♀️ 6. Do good work and share it with people
"If there was a secret formula for becoming known, I would give it to you. But there’s only one not-so-secret formula that I know: Do good work and share it with people."
- Do good work. Wonder at something.
- Share it with people. Invite others to wonder with you.
You don't have to share everything, just a little bit on what you're working on.
🌍 7. Geography is no longer our master
"Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder."
When our brains get too used to our surroundings, it turns into mush. At some point in time, leave home. Travel. See new people in new cultures doing strange new things. You can always come back home, but you have to leave at least once.
😄 8. Be nice (The world is a small town)
Be nice. Anything you say online about someone is going to be noticed by that person.
Follow people who are way smarter than you. Hang out with them. Try to be helpful. If you’re the most talented person in the room, find another room.
💤 9. Be boring (It’s the only way to get work done)
Figure out what time you can carve out, what time you can steal, and stick to your routine. Do the work every day, no matter what.
Have a routine. It minimizes the unneccesary time making microdecisions, and frees up time for the really important work.
Follow a productivity system. Have a study system. Goals always change, but systems are stable.
Make stuff every day. Know you’re going to suck for a while. Fail. Get better.
➖ 10. Creativity is subtraction
Those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out, so they can concentrate on what’s really important to them.
It's the things that you leave out that makes it interesting. We're all interested in the guy who started a business without any capital. The woman who painted a masterpiece using only one colour. The musician who composed the world's ugliest music. The guy who filmed an octopus for a full year (it's really good, link for Netflix users).
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