Teaching people doesn’t subtract value from what you do, it actually adds to it.
Take time to be bored. One time I heard a coworker say, “When I get busy, I get stupid.
I think the same thing is true of our idea incomes. You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with.
The right constraints can lead to your very best work. My favorite example? Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat with only 236 different words, so his editor bet him he couldn’t write a book with only 50 different words. Dr. Seuss came back and won the bet with Green Eggs and Ham, one of the bestselling children’s books of all time.
It helps to live around interesting people, and not necessarily people who do what you do. I feel a little incestuous when I hang out with only writers and artists, so I enjoy the many filmmakers, musicians, and tech geeks who live in Austin. Oh, and food. The food should be good. You have to find a place that feeds you – creatively, socially, spiritually, and literally.
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.
When you ignore quantitative measurements for a bit, you can get back to qualitative measurements.
We all have the opportunity to use our voices, to have our say, but so many of us are wasting it.
Human beings want to know where things came from, how they were made, and who made them. The stories you tell about the work you do have a huge effect on how people feel and what they understand about your work, and how people feel and what they understand about your work effects how they value it.
And this, too, shall pass away.
Like one of his heroes, Tom Waits, whenever Yorke feels like his songwriting is getting too comfortable or stale, he’ll pick up an instrument he doesn’t know how to play and try to write with it. This is yet another trait of amateurs – they’ll use whatever tools they can get their hands on to try to get their ideas into the world. “I’m an artist, man,” said John Lennon. “Give me a tuba, and I’ll get you something out of it.
You know that phrase, “going through the motions”? That’s what’s so great about creative work: If we just start going through the motions, if we strum a guitar, or shuffle sticky notes around a conference table, or start kneading clay, the motion kickstarts our brain into thinking.
Write the kind of story you like best – write the story you want to read.
The art of holding on to money is all about saying no to consumer culture.
And remember: If you want maximum artistic freedom, keep your overhead low. A free creative life is not about living within your means, it’s about living below your means.
Worry more about leaving things better than you found them.
To be on brand is to be 100% certain of who you are and what you do, and certainly, in art and in life, is not only completely overrated, it is also a roadblock to discovery. Uncertainty is the very thing that art thrives on.
The writer Wilson Mizner said if you copy from one author, it’s plagiarism, but if you copy from many, it’s research. I.
The writer Jonathan Lethem has said that when people call something “original,” nine out of ten times they just don’t know the references or the original sources involved.
You don’t put yourself online only because you have something to say – you can put yourself online to find something to say.