Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon

Three Point Summary | Notes on big ideas from intriguing books

Mar 03, 2023

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative is a New York Times best-seller about creativity.

The book’s author, Austin Kleon, has written other successes like Show Your Work, Keep Going, and also is an active Substack creator.

Art is theft.

Pablo Picasso

I. Savvy Stealing

If you write, make videos, sing, act, paint, sculpt, are an entrepreneur, or do anything creative, this book will help you.

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

First, you figure out what’s worth stealing, then you move on to the next thing.
That’s about all there is to it.
When you look at the world this way, you stop worrying about what’s “good’ and what’s “bad”—there’s only stuff worth stealing, and stuff that’s not worth stealing.

All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original. It’s right there in the bible: “There is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Use the wisdom of the past. Remix it. Add in your stories from your experience. You will appear brilliant, when you’re really just a clever borrower of old ideas.

II. Choosing Good Influences

The quality of your attention use = the quality of your creative work.

Everything you consume is shaping your thoughts. You must be careful about where you direct your eyeballs and perk your ears. Use it on people you want to emulate. Use it on content that inspires you.

You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences…Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.
The reason to copy your heroes and their style is so that you might somehow get a glimpse into their minds.

People worry about stealing ideas from others. But no one in the world has the same combination of influences that you have; if you use use enough influences when doing creative work, the final product is still unique.

Kobe Bryant studied Michael Jordan and stole moves from him. Jayson Tatum studied Kobe Bryant and stole moves from him. A young player is studying Jayson Tatum right now, stealing moves from him.

It’s a process that happens in every domain—sports, art, politics, acting, writing. This type of theft is always going on and is how people improve.

III. Discernment

An underrated life skill is knowing what to ignore. To do good work, you have to ignore anything that isn’t going to help you on your creative mission:

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.