Steal Like an Artist

My morning commute is a quiet, 25-minute drive down a small interstate. While my office is in the heard of Historic Savannah, Ga, I live westward in a different city and county. If I'm on the road for almost an hour a day I figure I might as well make the most of it.

I typically spend my commute, both to and from the office, in one of three ways. My favorite of the three is to drive in silence. This gives me time to mentally prepare for my day on the way to work, or gradually transition from work mode into home mode on the way home. Another way I often spend my commute is by listening to audiobooks. I love to read and wish I had more time to do it. Audiobooks have been a great addition to my drives. The last way I sometimes spend my commute is listing to podcasts.

Recently I was listening to the EntreLeadership Podcast and the main interview was with Austin Kleon, author of two books we have and love at Focus Lab. The book discussed in this podcast episode was Steal Like an Artist. It's a short and wonderful read to anyone who makes things (which, as discussed in the podcast episode, is basically everyone).

I encourage you to listen to the episode on your own; but I wanted to share some of my key takeaways. If you want to listen to the segment with the author, scrub ahead to the 1:20 mark. The actual interview is about 28 minutes long. Here are my favorite thoughts and quotes:

1. "A lot of innovation and creativity is about knowing what came before you." (~4:50)
2. "If you just throw a little bit of effort into the search, you just dive a little bit deeper than the Average Joe or the average person in your field, it's amazing what you can dig up." (~8:00)
3. The discussion about questions and children between 8:35 and 12:15
4. Talking about how constraints enable and enhance creativity (~12:48)
5. Mastery versus amateurism/student (starts around 17:45)
6. "...attempt mastery while retaining [the spirit of a student]." (~20:25)

Go give it a listen and shoot a reply my way if you took something helpful away from it!