PNTV: Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon (#242)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes TV Today, another great book, Steal like an Artist. Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon. Subtitle 10 Things Nobody Told you'd about being creative. This is a great, fun, inspiring book. It's also a beautiful little book packed with drawings and doodles. Makes for a great coffee table addition to your household. Austin describes himself as a writer who draws. And just a fantastic book. We've got a philosopher's note, bunch of my favorite big ideas. This book reminds me of Steven Pressfield's War of Art in that trilogy. Right. Of the War of Art. Do the work. Turning Pro. I'll put links to the PNTV episodes on each of those below, which we're also going to feature. Austin's other book, show youw Work Soon. First, big idea, the Beatles. Did you know the Beatles started their career as a cover band? The Beatles. We think of them as one of the most creative groups of human beings that's ever come together, which is true. But they started their career playing other people's music for thousands and thousands and thousands of hours. As Malcolm Gladwell talks about in Outliers. We're gonna feature that soon. But the basic idea here is when we think about stealing like an artist, first of all, let's be clear. Stealing like an artist does not mean stealing people's work as a plagiarist and not giving them credit for their work. It means borrowing and stealing and integrating every aspect of the art that you admire, the books that you love to read, and just your life's experiences into your own work. Right? We're stealing all these little gems and integrating them into our lives. And one of the ways we do that is by copying the greats. So the Beatles copied all these other bands as they developed their own style, but no one is born with their own style. You create it as you, as Austin says, model your heroes who are the people you admire, who you aspire to be more like. Well, copy them. That's what Kobe Bryant did. He watched all of his favorite athletes, basketball players, of course, and he tried to integrate their signature moves into his game. He copied them with Hunter S. Thompson. I shared this story as Twyva Tharp shared it in the creative habit. Hunter S. Thompson got out his typewriter and he literally typed the Great Gatsby and Farewell to Arms, Hemingway's Farewell to Arms. He typed them out word by word on his typewriter from word number one, page one, to the end of the book, just so he can have the experience of writing a masterpiece. He wanted to know where, what it felt like to type that well. It's amazingly powerful stuff. It's what I'm doing. I'm putting another 10,000 hours in over the next five years reading some of my favorite and some of the best teachers and writers and authors out there so that I can integrate them into my work. It's a very deliberate practice. Who do you admire? How do you start copying their work into your own, giving them credit, thanking them for the inspiration and and then taking it to the next level in your own work? That's the first big idea. Second big idea is to be boring. If you want to be creative, you need to be boring. Austin says, look, the out of control, drug addicted artist that's been played out. If you want to have creativity that takes a ton of energy and you can't be dissipating it in a life that's out of control. You need to create routines in your life. You need to create a boring life such that you can create an inspired creative domain and world for yourself. Use up all that energy that you used to dissipate, put it into a focused set of routines. In the note, we talk more about Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert. He's got such great wisdom on the fact that he doesn't think about what he's going to do at 6:20am on a Saturday morning. He knows what he's going to do and he jokes that there are people who spend like two hours planning how they're going to do an hour task. And he says, look, I don't waste my energy on that, my time or my willpower trying to figure things out. I reduce my choices by having a routine and I live a boring life. Another cool idea. Austin had a 9 to 5 job. He was a full time web designer while he was getting his writing career off the ground. But he created a boring life such that he can pour his energy into his creativity. And he did so by having routines. It's a huge idea. Which brings us to the third big idea. If we want to create a body of work that we're inspired by that inspires others, we need to realize we do that drop by drop by drop. So the Buddha told us that a water pot is filled drop by drop. The same way that someone becomes good or they become bad, it's moment to moment to moment. It's drop by drop by drop. Well, that's how you create a body of work you're going to be proud of. You show up consistently day in and day out, you're boring. You know that inspiration is going to strike at 9am sharp, as Somerset Maugham said, right? He only writes when inspiration strikes. Somerset Maugham said only when inspiration strikes will he write. Thankfully, he says it strikes at 9am sharp every morning. He's boring. He shows up and he does the work. And in the process, you create a huge body of work if you simply show up. Austin says, look, if you write a page a day, that doesn't sound like a lot, but if you do that over 365 days, you have a novel that's amazing. So let's discipline ourselves to add a drop and another drop and another drop and another drop. Any individual action that you take may not seem significant, but when you aggregate that, it becomes significant. And you got to remember that inertia kills creativity and kills habit forming. You want to create momentum, as we talked about last week in one of our micro classes, right? Create momentum, then keep it going by being consistent drop by drop, by drop. Fourth, big idea. Constraints are good. Constraints are good. Steve Chandler, when I was working with Steve awesome for a couple of years, he taught me that constraints are good. He used the example Alan Watts said, look, tennis. That's our tennis court. Roughly. Is that a tennis court? Not quite, but you get the idea. That doesn't look anything like a tennis court, but let's pretend that was a tennis court. 10. Tennis is more fun with a court. If you're just banging a ball around and you have no constraints, well, that's kind of interesting. But tennis is only really interesting when you have to hit it over the net and you have to keep it between the lines and you create deliberate constraints in your life. So we want to create constraints in our lives and in our creativity, Right, Stravinsky. I share a quote in the Philosopher's Note. He. He says, the more constraints the better and the more arbitrary the better, because it forces you to come up with something you wouldn't otherwise come up with. In my own work, every single one of my philosopher's notes is six pages long. That's a deliberate constraint. People ask me, why don't you make this one eight pages long? There's so much good stuff, maybe even nine or ten. And sometimes I wish I had a longer one. But it's six pages. It's not four pages. Sometimes maybe five, sometimes seven, sometimes eight, it's six. And that consistency makes it really easy for me to know. This is my constraint. I've got to share my favorite stuff in this constraint. These episodes are 10 minutes, give or take two minutes. I used to be ruthless about it. 10 minutes. Now it's a little bit more flexible. The micro classes are three minutes long. Those are all constraints. So think about what you can do in your creative life to create constraints. Austin says, look, paint a painting with one color, film a movie on your iPhone with just a few friends. Have fun creating constraints and then your creativity can really come through. That's our fourth big idea. Fifth big idea is advice. Advice is sometimes a vice, so advice can sometimes be a vice. Advice, vice. I love that. Not everything that everyone tells you as advice obviously is going to be right for you. So you need to just let go of the things that don't resonate and focus on that which is your truth. As Emerson says, trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string. One of my favorite lines ever. Trust thyself. If something doesn't resonate, let it go. And if something does fire you up, lean into it and create your own philosophy of what's meaningful. I referenced Nietzsche in the note as well. Nietzsche says, well, look, people would come up to him and say, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, his character has people coming up to him saying what's the way? Tell me the way. Zarathustra would say, there is no the way. This is my way. What's your way for the way? That does not exist. There is no one way to live our lives. What's true for me isn't always going to be true for you. Let it go. What isn't? Lean into what is. Don't should on yourself thinking you should do something just because I or anyone else said it or you even said it to yourself. But it doesn't resonate. Trust thyself. Know that some advice is actually advice. Focus on what fires you up. Scientists, psychologists say the same thing. Have self concordant goals. The stuff that really resonates with you, that's the stuff that's going to stick. Not the shoulds. Which is why I always ask what resonated the most for you? What jumped out? What landed? How are you going to apply that to your life right now? Not what kind of sort of resonated that you feel like you should integrate into your life. Focus on that. That's not going to work. So there you go. Advice and vice constraints are good. Create them for yourself. Paradox of choice. I'll put that link below as well. Barry Schwartz tells us that paradoxically, more choice actually equals less happiness. Deliberately constrain your choices and increase your happiness. Drop by drop by drop. That's how anything great is created. Show up consistently, get the momentum and keep the momentum. Be boring right in your overall life so you can be really, really animated and creative in the rest of your life. And the Beatles? They were a cover band. Think about what you can copy, think about what you can steal in your life and integrate into your own style with proper attribution. Thanks for the people who have inspired you on the way and and get out there and have fun. There you go. Quick look. Hope you enjoyed. I look forward to sharing more. Have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that PNTV episode. 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