“Find the most talented person in the room, and if it’s not you, go stand next to him. Hang out with him. Try to be helpful. (Or) If you ever find that you’re the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.”

You have to 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. Google everything. Google your dreams, Google your problems. You’ll either find the answer or you’ll come up with a better question.

Curious

<ul><li>Figure out what time you can carve out, what time you can steal, and stick to your routine. Do the work every day, no matter what. No holidays, no sick days. Don’t stop.</li><li>Parkinson’s Law: “Work gets done in the time available.”</li><li>Get a calendar. Fill the boxes. Don’t break the chain.</li></ul>

Make Stealing A Habit

<ul><li>Don’t just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style.</li><li>Imitation is about copying. Emulation is when imitation goes one step further, breaking through into your own thing.</li><li>All you need is a little space and a little time—a place to work, and some time to do it; a little self-imposed solitude and temporary captivity.</li></ul>

Imitation Vs Emulation

“Fake it ’til you make it. Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find your self.”

<ul><li>Life is a lonely business, often filled with discouragement and rejection. Validation is for parking, but it’s still a tremendous boost when people say nice things about our work.</li><li>It takes a lot of energy to be creative. You don’t have that energy if you waste it on other stuff.</li><li>Learn from them, steal from them.</li></ul>

Creative

<ul><li>We learn by copying.</li><li>We’re talking about practice here, not plagiarism—plagiarism is trying to pass someone else’s work off as your own.</li><li>First, figure out who to copy.</li><li>Second, figure out what to copy.</li></ul>

Copycat 🐱

“if you copy from one author, it’s plagiarism, but if you copy from many, it’s research.”

“Do good work and share it with people.”Step one, “do good work,” is incredibly hard. There are no shortcuts. Make stuff every day. Know you’re going to suck for a while. Fail. Get better.Step two, “share it with people,” was really hard up until about ten years ago or so. Now, it’s very simple: “Put your stuff on Internet”.

Not So Secret Formula

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

“Telling yourself you have all the time in the world, all the money in the world, all the colors in the palette, anything you want—that just kills creativity.”

Step 1: Wonder at something.Step 2: Invite others to wonder with you. You should wonder at the things nobody else is wondering about.If everybody’s wondering about apples, go wonder about oranges. The more open you are about sharing your passions, the closer people will feel to your work.Artists aren’t magicians. There’s no penalty for revealing your secrets.

Reveal Your Secrets

“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”

“Every artist gets asked the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” The honest artist answers, “I steal them.”

<ul><li>Remember “garbage in, garbage out”? You’re only going to be as good as the people you surround yourself with.</li><li>In the digital space, that means following the best people online—the people who are way smarter and better than you, the people who are doing the really interesting work.(Deepstash)</li></ul>

Garbage In, Garbage Out

<ul><li>Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.</li><li>You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences.</li><li>Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.</li></ul>

Steal Like An Artist

<ul><li>Limitations mean freedom.</li><li>In this age of information abundance and overload, those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out, so they can concentrate on what’s really important to them.</li><li>In the end, creativity isn’t just the things we choose to put in, it’s the things we choose to leave out. Choose wisely.</li></ul>

Limitations == Freedom

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”—T. S. Eliot’s dictum, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Steve Jobs

You don’t need to be a genius, you just need to be yourself. That’s the message from Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who knows that creativity is everywhere, creativity is for everyone. A manifesto for the digital age, Steal Like an Artist is a guide whose positive message, graphic look and illustrations, exercises, and examples will put readers directly in touch with their artistic side. When Mr. Kleon was asked to address college students in upstate New York, he shaped his speech around the ten things he wished someone had told him when he was starting out. The talk went viral, and its author dug deeper into his own ideas to create Steal Like an Artist, the book. The result is inspiring, hip, original, practical, and entertaining. And filled with new truths about creativity: Nothing is original, so embrace influence, collect ideas, and remix and re-imagine to discover your own path. Follow your interests wherever they take you. Stay smart, stay out of debt, and risk being boring—the creative you will need to make room to be wild and daring in your imagination.

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Career

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Personal Development

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Strategy

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Books

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Leadership & Management

You don’t need to be a genius, you just need to be yourself. That’s the message from Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who knows that creativity is everywhere, creativity is for everyone. A manifesto for the digital age, Steal Like an Artist is a guide whose positive message, graphic look and illustrations, exercises, and examples will put readers directly in touch with their artistic side. When Mr. Kleon was asked to address college students in upstate New York, he shaped his speech around the ten things he wished someone had told him when he was starting out. The talk went viral, and its author dug deeper into his own ideas to create Steal Like an Artist, the book. The result is inspiring, hip, original, practical, and entertaining. And filled with new truths about creativity: Nothing is original, so embrace influence, collect ideas, and remix and re-imagine to discover your own path. Follow your interests wherever they take you. Stay smart, stay out of debt, and risk being boring—the creative you will need to make room to be wild and daring in your imagination.

I’m a writer who draws. I make art with words and books with pictures. Author of Steal Like An Artist and other bestsellers. Visit my website: http://austinkleon.com/

HAROLD RAMIS

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