Another great book by Austin Kleon.
These simple, short, and easy-to-read books are a great balance, and can serve as a palate cleanse, when reading complex books or books that are 400+ pages that seem to take forever to read.
Also, easy to read doesn’t mean easy to write. Just because the content is easy to absorb doesn’t mean that there is not lots of value and wisdom packed in these pages.
Flow: 5/5, can probably be read in a day or two.
Actionability: 4.5/5, lots of specifics that can be easily applied and integrated into our daily lives as creators
Mindset: 4/5, if you are a creator this book will help you change the way you think about art and creativity
Some Of My Highlights:
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“‘In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities,’ said Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki. ‘In the expert’s mind, there are few.'”
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“The best way to get started on the path of sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others.”
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“It sounds a little extra, but in this day and age, if your work isn’t online, it doesn’t exist.”
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“The first step is to scoop up the scraps and residue of your process and shape them into some interesting but of media that you can share.”
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“‘No one is going to give a damn about your resume; they want to see what you have made with your own little fingers.”
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“If you’re in the very early stages, share your influences and what’s inspiring you. If you’re in the middle of executing a project, write about your methods or share works in progress. If you’ve just completed a project, show the final product, share scraps from the cutting-room, or write about what you learned.”
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“You might miss an episode of your favorite TV show, you might have to miss an hour of sleep, but you can find the time if you look for it.”
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“There’s a big, big difference between sharing and oversharing.”
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“Before we’re ready to take the leap of sharing our own work with the world, we can share our tastes in the work of others.”
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“‘The cat sat on a mat’ is not a story. ‘The cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is a story.” – John le Carré
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“Just because you know the masters’ technique doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to emulate it right away.”
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“They encourage businesses to figure out the equivalent of their own cooking show.”
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“As every writer knows, if you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader first.”
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“‘There’s never a space under paintings in a gallery where someone writes their opinion’, says cartoonist Natalie Dee. ‘When you get to the end of a book, you don’t have to see what everyone else thought of it’.”
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“We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.” – Walt Disney
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“The people who get what they’re after are very often the ones who just stick around long enough.”