If you are an artist, entrepreneur, writer, or creator of any type, this book will be valuable. Also, it’s an easy read.
Great to use as a “palate cleanse” in-between big or dense books.
Flow: 5/5
Actionability: 5/5
Mindset: 4/5
Some of My Highlights:
- “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillard
- “…when your days pretty much have the same shape, the days that don’t have that shape become even more interesting.”
- “What your daily routine consists of is not that important. What’s important is that the routine exists… break from it once in a while for fun, and modify it as necessary.”
- “Leonardo da Vinci made ‘to-learn’ lists. He’d get up in the morning and write down everything he wanted to learn that day.”
- “A day that seems like a waste now might turn out to have a purpose or use or beauty to it later on.”
- “Let o of the thing that you’re trying to be (the noun), and focus on the actual work you need to be doing (the verb).”
- “But being creative is never an end; it is a means to something else. Creativity is just a tool.”
- “Play is the work of the child and it is also the work of the artist.”
- “Times are always tough economically for artists and freelancers, so define the sort of lifestyle you want to live, budget for your expenses, and draw the line between what you will and won’t do for money.”
- “Do what you love + low overhead = a good life. Do what you love + I deserve nice things = a time bomb.”
- “‘Suckcess’ is what poet Jean Cocteau was referring to when he said, ‘There is a kind of success worse than failure.'”
- “C.S. Lewis convinced J.R.R. Tolkien to turn the fantastical stories he told his children into The Hobbit. The list goes on and on.”
- “This is exactly what an artist does: By paying extra attention to their world, they teach us to pay more attention to ours.”
- “Of course, to change your mind is to do some real thinking. Thinking requires an environment in which you can try out all sorts of ideas and not be judged for them. To change your mind, you need a good place to have some bad ideas.”
- “No, if you’re going to change your mind, you might have to go off-brand, and offline is the place to go off-brand.”
- “The Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca said that if you read old books, you get to add all the years the author lived onto your own life.”