Book Byte #137 "Steal like an Artist" by Austin Kleon

10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

📣 Curious Quotes from the Author

“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.”

“If you ever find that you're the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.”

“You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.”

“You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see. You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”

“Be curious about the world in which you live. Look things up. Chase down every reference. Go deeper than anybody else--that's how you'll get ahead.”

“Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing.”

“The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there's a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively. They only collect things that they really love.”

“You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.”

“Not everybody will get it. People will misinterpret you and what you do. They might even call you names. So get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored -- the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.”

“Always be reading. Go to the library. There’s magic in being surrounded by books. Get lost in the stacks. Read bibliographies. It’s not the book you start with, it’s the book that book leads you to. Collect books, even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Filmmaker John Waters has said, “Nothing is more important than an unread library.” Don’t worry about doing research. Just search.”

“Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable. You need to spend some time in another land, among people that do things differently than you. Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder.”

“Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find yourself.”

“The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best—write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career”

“Read deeply. Stay open. Continue to wonder.”

📚 Cognition of the Book’s Big Idea:

All artists steal; no work of art is entirely unique. So steal efficiently by researching your idols, mimicking them, and creating a favorable work environment for yourself. Maintain your hobbies and push yourself outside of your comfort zone, then promote yourself online once you've exhausted the benefits of anonymity.

Finally, you'll leverage your influences to create new art, inspiring others in the process. Avoid obsessing on your task. Don't devote all of your time to your creativity; allow yourself to take pauses, have fun, and focus on other things. Don't stay cooped up in your studio; instead, challenge yourself to relocate to a different city or nation and explore.

Keeping a healthy distance from your art will improve it, making you happier and more pleased.

🛠️Fixing the Tech Industry

Coders are usually artists. Most people outside our industry think that isn’t the case, but I can prove everyone one of them wrong just by looking at someones code. There’s an almost finesse, you can tell in an instant how neat and tidy it all is whereto someone outside our industry would just see a bunch of command line words.

They are also known to steal lots of code, which we’ll call open source code or libraries. Some of the things they create are crazy ingenious. Coders are Artists, through and through.

🤝Collaborate with others with this Social Media Prompt:

What do you like to do that can be considered your Art?

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My Software Stack: I use Skool for my Online Community Platform and ClickFunnels for my Landing Pages, Payments, and Email Sequencing. I use Substack for my Newsletter and Taskade for AI Note Taking/Second Brain/Project Management. I use my Personal Amazon Store for Tech and Book Recommendations.

Try out the "Think and Grow Rich Challenge" by Russell Brunson and Learn more about the First Self Help Author Napoleon Hill

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