Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

How does an artist look at the world? 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. Everything is up for grabs. If you don’t find something worth stealing today, you might find it worth stealing tomorrow or a month or a year from now.

What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.

Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.

Instead, chew on one thinker—writer, artist, activist, role model—you really love. Study everything there is to know about that thinker. Then find three people that thinker loved, and find out everything about them. Repeat this as many times as you can. Climb up the tree as far as you can go. Once you build your tree, it’s time to start your own branch.

It’s not the book you start with, it’s the book that book leads you to.

You might be scared to start. That’s natural. There’s this very real thing that runs rampant in educated people. It’s called “impostor syndrome.”

It means that you feel like a phony, like you’re just winging it, that you really don’t have any idea what you’re doing.

I love both readings—you have to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, and you have to start doing the work you want to be doing.

First, you have to figure out who to copy. Second, you have to figure out what to copy.

If all your favorite makers got together and collaborated, what would they make with you leading the crew?

The manifesto is this: Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use—do the work you want to see done.

“The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.” —Jessica Hische

As the writer Steven Pressfield says, “It’s not that people are mean or cruel, they’re just busy.”

Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable. You need to spend some time in another land, among people that do things differently than you. Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder.