The book 'Steal like an artist' was written by Austin Kleon and this is just a summary of it. All credit goes to him.
I hope you can find this article relatable to you as a technologically oriented person in your field of expertise just like I did.
HOW TO LOOK AT THE WORLD(like an artist): Figure out if anything is worth stealing or not and move on to the next thing.
"The only art I'll ever study is stuff that I can steal from". - David Bowie
Jonathan Lethem said when people call something "original", nine out of ten times, they just don't know the references or the original sources involved. Nothing is completely original, modified yeah, but it has been in existence before.
What is originality? Undetected plagiarism." - William Ralph Inge
[1] STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST
*The genealogy of ideas: Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas. You are a mashup of what you choose to let in your life.
Goethe- 'WE ARE SHAPED AND FASHIONED BY WHAT WE LOVE.'
"We were kids without fathers... so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves." -- Jay-z
*Garbage in, Garbage out: The artist is a selective collector and not a hoarder. They only collect things they really love. Collect more good ideas so as to get a wider range of things that influences you.
"Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speaks directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic." - Jim Jarmusch
*Climb your own family tree: Try to study the person behind the art\work and not the art itself. Build your knowledge around the thinker -writer, painter- you really love. Study their lifestyle. Then find three persons that thinker loved and discover everything about their lifestyles. Repeat this cycle as many times as possible. By doing this, you are building your own tree and will be able to start your own branch in no time.
*School yourself: Never stop/quit learning. Don't stop reading. Research. Ask questions. Anything that seems unclear, Google it. Do not ask a question without first googling it. Add more books to your library even if you are not reading immediately. 'It's not the book you start with, it's the book that book leads you to.'
"Whether I went to school or not, I would always study." - RZA
*Save your thefts for later: Carry a notebook and pen with you wherever you go. Jot anything that piques your interest, whether it be books, phone conversations etc. Keep a swipe file- a file to keep track of stuff you swiped from other people. See something worth stealing? Put in the swipe file. Need a little inspiration, open up the swipe file.
"It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected." - Mark Twain
[2] DON'T WAIT UNTIL YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE TO GET STARTED.
*Make things, know thyself: Do not wait around doing nothing with the mindset of discovering yourself like that. It is in the process of doing things, you discover who you are. Start creating, start writing, painting, singing, just start doing something.
*Fake it till you make it: As You Like It by Shakespeare: All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts. The dramaturgy above translates to the phrase "fake it 'til you make it" in two ways. One is: Pretend to be something you're not until you are -fake it until you are successful, until everyone sees you the way you want them to; or two: Pretend to be making something until you actually make something.
"You start out as a phony and become real." - Glenn O'Brien
Start copying:* "Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy, you will find yourself." - Yohji Yamamoto Copy here is not referring to plagiarism. Nobody is born with a style or a voice. In the beginning, we learn by copying our heroes or role models.
Salvador Dali- "Those who don't want to imitate anything, produce nothing." Figure out who and what to copy and don't just steal from one of your heroes, steal from all of them.
Writer Wilson Mizner - If you copy from one author, it is plagiarism, but if you copy from many, it's research. For what to copy, don't just copy the style, steal the thinking behind the style(so as to see like our heroes and not look like them)
Imitation is not flattery:* "We want you to take from us. We want you, to steal from us, because you can't steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that's how you will find your voice. And that's how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you." - Francis Ford Coppola
After a while, we have to move from imitating our heroes, to emulating them. We have to modify attributes of theirs we like to our own taste. Mere imitation of our heroes isn't flattery, transforming their works into something of ours is.
"It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique." - Conan O'Brien
[3] WRITE THE BOOK YOU WANT TO READ
Gather your branches- mix+match- make what they would make.
*Write what you like and not what you know. Write the story you want to read, draw the art you want to see, do the work you want to see done.
"My interest in making music has been to create something that does not exist that I would like to listen to. I wanted to hear music that had not yet happened, by putting together things that suggested a new thing which did not yet exist. -Brian Eno
[4] USE YOUR HANDS
"We don't know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops." -John Cleese
*Step away from the screen: take a break from staring at the screen of your devices. Use your fingers to create something, to feel something else apart from your computer's keyboard. Art that only comes from the head isn't any good. Let those ideas come to play\live. Get your hands dirty, be more hands on and less computerized with your work.
[5] SIDE PROJECTS AND HOBBIES ARE IMPORTANT.
"The work you do while you procastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life. - Jessica Hische
*Practice productive procastination: It is okay to be bored. You'll find out that that period of you being bored, will more likely help you think of new ideas.
"Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind- Kalman
*Don't throw any of yourself away: Whether your passions relate or not, keep them all. They make you who you are, unique. The fact that the passions are yours, makes them relate.
"You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards." - Steve Jobs
*Have a hobby
*Surround yourself with people in other fields too and not only those in your line of work.
[6] DO GOOD WORK AND SHARE IT WITH PEOPLE.
*Obscurity is good in the beginning, enjoy your moment of not being known while you can and, do work everyday.
*The not-so-secret formula: After doing good work, share it with people. Use the internet. Yes, paste it on the internet for people to see.
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." - Howard Aiken
[7] GEOGRAPHY IS NO LONGER OUR MASTER.
*Build your own world: Create the community you want to be a part of, or look for the community you would love to be a part of and, join it.
*Enjoy captivity: Practice self-imposed solitude from time to time. It is important for effectiveness.
*Leave home: Sometimes, the inspiration you need might just be on the outside of your home or farther. Leave home occasionally, for walks, vacation or the likes.
"Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything." - Jonah Lehrer
[8] BE NICE.(The world is a small town.)
"There's only one rule I know of: You've got to be kind." - Kurt Vonnegut
*Make friends, ignore enemies: Try as much as possible to compliment your friends and ignore your enemies on the internet.
*Stand next to the talent: Make sure when you are in a room, there is at least one person who is more knowledgeable than you. If there is nobody like that, you need to leave where you are and go elsewhere.
"The only mofos in my circle are people that I can learn from." - Questlove
*Quit picking fights and go make something: Channel the energy you use in arguing on social media into creating something.
"Complain about the way other people make software by making software." - Andre Torrez
*Write fan letters: You can write letters to your role models, but do not expect a reply, else, you can write public fan letters, like on Twitter.
*Validation is for parking: Expect both negative and positive reactions from people once you put your work out to the world. Get comfortable with the series of critisicm and if possible, throw yourself deeper into your work.
*Keep a praise file: Keep those nice tweets, mails. You can then go back to them once in a while when you need a bit of motivation.
[9] BE BORING. (It's the only way to get work done.)
"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." - Gustave Flaubert
*Take care of yourself: Sleep well, eat right, exercise and take care of yourself.
*Stay out of debt: Learn about money. Create budgets. Live within your limits. For every opportunity you get to save, grab it. Avoid wasteful spending. Peace comes from knowing you are not drowning in debt.
*Keep your day job: It's okay to keep your day job. You'll learn things you can apply to your dreams. The funds from it can be used to fuel your dreams, wants, ideas.
*Get yourself a calendar: Break your work into chunks to make it seem less heinous. Plan your work using the calendar. Set target and tick boxes off once you reach the set goal for the day. (Get a calender. Fill the boxes. Don't break the chain.)
*Keep a logbook: A logbook is a book where you jot down the things you do everyday. it helps you to track your progress.
*Marry well: Marrying well here doesn't only have to do with just life partner, it also means building the right connections, making the right friends.
[10] CREATIVITY IS SUBTRACTION.
*Choose what to leave out: The power is in your hands, there is just as much beauty and creativity in leaving some details out as including some.
"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." - Jack White
Written by: Austin Kleon
Summarized by: Olawumi.