20 creativity lessons from the book ‘Keep Going’
Whether you’re burned out, starting out, starting over, or wildly successful, the question is always the same: How to keep going?
Creativity is what every artist needs in order to grow their art. In this book Austin Kleon shares ways for artists to stay creative in both bad and good times.
Keep Going is a third book from Austin’s trilogy. The first book is Steal Like an Artist followed by Show Your Work, and finally Keep Going.
In this article I have highlighted 20 actionable lessons to stay creative:
1.Take it one day at a time
Identify what you want to spend your time on, and then work at it every day, no matter what.
Remember you can only control the present, yesterday is over and tomorrow may never come.
2.Establish a daily routine
There is no perfect, universal routine for creative work. To establish your own routine, you have to spend some time observing your days and your moods.
When you have all the time in the world, a routine helps you make sure you don’t waste it.
3.Make lists
A list gets all your ideas out of your head and clears the mental space so you’re actually able to do something about them.
Working with lists will help you prioritize your tasks and free your mind from worrying. You will also not forget what you need to accomplish.
4.Disconnect with the world to connect with yourself
Set a place or an hour to connect with yourself every day. This is a place where you can think, practice your art, and bring forth something worth sharing with others.
The world is full of news and constant notification 24/7. In order to tap to our inner being, you need solitude and a clear space.
5.You can be woke without waking to the news
When you reach for your phone or your laptop upon waking, you’re immediately inviting anxiety and chaos into your life.
Before you go to bed, plug your phone into an outlet across the room, or somewhere out of arm’s reach. When you wake up, try your best not to look at it. There are so many better ways to wake up: Head to your bliss station, eat breakfast, stretch, do some exercises, take a walk, run, listen to Mozart, shower, read a book, play with your kids, or just be silent for a bit
6.Forget the noun do the verb
Creative is not a noun, it’s a verb.
Job titles can restrict the kinds of work that you feel like you can do. If you only consider yourself a “painter,” then what happens when you want to try out writing?
If and when you finally get to be the noun — when that coveted job title is bestowed upon you by others — don’t stop doing your verb.
7.Protect your valuables
We used to have hobbies; now we have “side hustles.”
One of the easiest ways to hate something you love is to turn it into your job: taking the thing that keeps you alive spiritually and turning it into the thing that keeps you alive literally.
Don’t make money out of your hobbies. The work will become poor and you won’t enjoy it anymore.
8.Ignore the numbers
Sharing your work online means that it is subjected to online metrics such as website visits, likes, shares, follower counts, and more. It’s easy to become as obsessed with online metrics as money.
I’ll often post something I loved making that took me forever and crickets chirp. I’ll post something else I think is sort of lame that took me no effort and it will go viral. If I let those metrics run my personal practice, I don’t think my heart could take it very long.
9.Where there is no gift there is no art
When you feel as though you’ve lost or you’re losing your gift, the quickest way to recover is to step outside the marketplace and make gifts.
Try it: If you’re bummed out and hating your work, pick somebody special in your life and make something for them. If you have a big audience, make them something special and give it away. See how it feels.
You never know when a gift made for a single person will turn into a gift for the whole world.
10.You have everything you need
You do not need to have an extraordinary life to make extraordinary work. Everything you need to make extraordinary art can be found in your everyday life.
The first step toward transforming your life into art is to start paying more attention.
11.Slow down and draw things out
To slow down and pay attention to your world, pick up a pencil and a piece of paper and start drawing what you see.
Drawing is really an exercise in seeing, you can suck at drawing and still get a ton out of it.
Roger Ebert wrote, “By sitting somewhere and sketching something, I was forced to really look at it. My drawings were a means of experiencing a place or a moment more deeply.”
Drawing is meditating.
12.Pay attention to what you pay attention to
Your attention is one of the most valuable things you possess; first you must protect it, and then you must point it in the right direction.
What you choose to pay attention to is the stuff your life and work will be made of.
Reread your diary. Flip back through your sketchbook. Scroll through your camera roll. Rewatch footage you’ve filmed. Listen to music you’ve recorded.
When you have a system for going back through your work, you can better see the bigger picture of what you’ve been up to, and what you should do next.
13.To change is to be alive
We’re afraid of changing our minds because we’re afraid of the consequences. “What will people think?” But the only way to grow is if we let new thoughts in.
The internet, unfortunately, is no longer a safe place to do any kind of experimental thinking.
If you’re going to change your mind, to do it offline. You can use a paper journal, a private chat room, a living room full of trusted loved ones: These are the places to really think.
Interacting with people who don’t share our perspective forces us to rethink our ideas, strengthen our ideas, or trade our ideas for better ones.
14.Visit the past
If you’re having trouble finding people to think with, seek out the dead. They have a lot to say and they are excellent listeners.
Red old books. almost every problem you have has probably been written about by some other human living hundreds if not thousands of years before you
15.Keep your tools tidy, and your materials messy
We don’t have to keep our spaces perfectly clean and tidy. We just have to keep them ready for when we want to work.
My studio, like my mind, is always a bit of a mess. Books and newspapers are piled everywhere, pictures are torn out and stuck on the wall, cut-up scraps litter the floor. But it’s not an accident that my studio is a mess. I love my mess. I intentionally cultivate my mess
16.Sleep tidies up the brain
When you sleep, your body literally flushes out the junk in your head. Naps are the secret weapon of many artists.
Me, I like the “caffeine nap”: Drink a cup of coffee or tea, lie down for fifteen minutes, and get back to work when the caffeine has kicked in.
17.Leave things better than you found them
Art is not only made from things that “spark joy.” Art is also made out of what is ugly or repulsive to us.
Part of the artist’s job is to help tidy up the place, to make order out of chaos, to turn trash into treasure, to show us beauty where we can’t see it.
Learn to observe with a keen eye to notice and make the beauty from the ugly.
18.To exercise is to exorcise
Walking is a magic cure for people who want to think straight.
When we’re glued to our screens, the world looks unreal. Terrible. Not worth saving or even spending time with. But when you get outside and you start walking and you come to your senses.
The list of famous artists, poets, and scientists who took strolls, hikes, and rambles around the city and countryside is practically endless: Wallace Stevens, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Dickens, Ludwig van Beethoven, Bob Dylan, Henry David Thoreau and others.
Get outside every day. Take long walks by yourself. Take walks with a friend or a loved one or a dog. Always keep a notebook or camera in your pocket for when you want to stop to capture a thought or an image.
19.Creativity has seasons
Like a tree, creative work has seasons. Part of the work is to know which season you’re in, and act accordingly.
In winter, “the tree looks dead, but we know it is beginning a very deep process, out of which will come spring and summer.”
You have to pay attention to the rhythms and cycles of your creative output and learn to be patient in the off-seasons. You have to give yourself time to change and observe your own patterns.
“Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long.” — May Sarton
20.This too shall pass
Try your best to fill your days in ways that get you a little closer to where you want to be. Go easy on yourself and take your time. Worry less about getting things done. Worry more about things worth doing. Worry less about being a great artist. Worry more about being a good human being who makes art.
Conclusion
In a world full of new information, staying true to your art can be wearing. This book will show you how to keep going in whatever state you are. The answer to the question “What’s next?” is a never ending quest to any artist.
You can also read my summary of Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work before starting your creative journey.
