Books · Creativity
Book summary and verdict
Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad
Austin Kleon says the work may never get easier, which is terrible news if you bought this hoping to become a different person. You won't. Put the phone down, make one small thing, and earn the right to waste the rest of Tuesday.
Should you read it?
If you used to make things and stopped, yes. If every creative session feels like pushing a sofa through a bathroom window, also yes. If creativity books are now your main creative practice, you have enough.
L.I waited to feel inspired. Then I put away the phone and began badly. Apparently I was the delay.
The ideas
I · Repetition
Build a day you can repeat without eventually faking your own disappearance.
Most of your life is the same Tuesday wearing a different shirt. You sit down to do the thing you claim matters, hit one hard thought, and suddenly the bathroom grout is a national emergency. Congratulations, the sink looks terrific. Your dream is still unemployed.
So create a routine. Make a list. Do the thing. Cross off the day. The routine matters because motivation is a lunatic. It appears at midnight with seventeen ideas, then disappears the next morning when it is time to perform one actual task.
L.Routine removes choice. Choice was misusing the privilege.
II · Shelter
Protect one hour for your own work. Tell everyone you are at the dentist. Nobody wants details.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
III · Action
Calling yourself an artist is free. Unfortunately, art requires evidence.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
IV · Attention
Stare at anything long enough and it becomes art, evidence, or a medical concern.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
V · Gifts
Make it for one real person. Humanity is impossible to shop for.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
What to actually do
Put your phone on airplane mode, set a timer for fifteen minutes, and make one small thing.
Smaller: Write a paragraph. Draw something. Play two bars on the keyboard you bought during that brief week when you believed in yourself.
L.When the timer rings, you may stop. Do not celebrate by shopping for a better timer.
Stop waiting to feel official. Make one small thing.
Smaller: Write one sentence, paint one shape, or play one clumsy phrase, because the work can exist before your confidence does.
L.Do it again tomorrow. Let the evidence give you the title. A novelist with no sentences is just someone ruining brunch with a very specific future.
Make the next thing for one actual person.
Smaller: Do not post it, optimize it, or consult a dashboard. Give it to them. If they hate it, they still have to look you in the face and lie, because that is how friendship worked before analytics.
L.One person is an audience. A manageable, lying audience.
Go outside for ten minutes and actually look at one ordinary thing.
Smaller: Notice a dented car, a dead plant in a window, or a neighbor carrying six grocery bags because two trips would admit weakness.
L.Come back and use one detail in whatever you are making. Congratulations. You converted avoiding work into research.
Still in the app
- What happened when people tried them
- Bullshit?
- Where readers disagree
- The one thing worth remembering
The rest of this book is in the app.
Skip the Book reads the self-help books so you don't have to: what each one argues, what happened when real people tried it, which claims are exaggerated, and what to do tonight. 130 books and counting, new ones most days.
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