For many people, Austin Kleon’s “Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad” could be the right book with the right message at the right time.
Much like in his first bestseller, “Steal Like An Artist,” Kleon presents a fast and enjoyable read that is a thought-provoking checklist inspired by great creative minds through his structured lens. Some of his suggestions seem so simple as to be self-evident, but he’s pushing back against a world where we too often eschew simplicity for complicated, vexing and unhealthy obsessions, so this comes across like a breath of fresh air.
Speaking of which, one of my favorite chapters here is titled “Demons Hate Fresh Air.” Kleon relates how he, his wife and two sons (in a double stroller) go for a three-mile walk almost every day which is “often painful, sometimes sublime, but it’s absolutely essential to our day.”
The walk is “where ideas are born and books are edited” and “really a magical cure for people who want to think straight.” He even cites the Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic’s 2300+ year old advice of “solvitur ambulando,” or “it is solved by walking.”
There’s a reason such wisdom remains for so long: I’ve found walking and running to be two marvelous cures for everything from small phrasing conundrums to writer’s block. Whole blog entries, songs, poems or parts of book chapters tumble from my head while out for a nice walk (though I really should get better at preserving them before I forget). Without even the benefit of fresh air, when I’m stuck for a headline or lead to a story, walking up a flight of stairs to the third-floor bathroom at work almost always results in a breakthrough.
Walking, Kleon adds, “is great for releasing our inner demons, but maybe even more important, walking is great for battling our outer demons.”
The people who want to control us through fear and misinformation — the corporations, marketers, politicians — want us to be plugged into our phones or watching TV, because then they can sell us their vision of the world. If we do not get outside, if we do not take a walk out in the fresh air, we do not see our everyday world for what it really is, and we have no vision of our own with which to combat misinformation.
This battle with a digital world’s negative effects surfaces throughout the book. In the chapter “Build A Bliss Station,” he speaks of the importance of a place and/or time to make the point of disconnecting. I’m one of those who finds early hours ideal for creative work, and Kleon wonders how many people get sidetracked by the often soul-crushing habit of checking the news first thing in the morning. “There’s almost nothing in the news that any of us need to read in the first hour of the day,” Kleon writes. “When you reach for your phone or your laptop upon waking, you’re immediately inviting anxiety and chaos into your life.”
In the chapter “The Ordinary + Extra Attention = The Extraordinary,” he reminds us: “Pay attention to what you pay attention to. … Your attention is one of the most valuable things you possess, which is why everyone wants to steal it from you.” Think about the people you know whose attention is always wrapped up in political arguments on the Internet — where nobody changes their minds — and how they could use that time more wisely.
Back to the “Bliss Station” chapter again, that also wonderfully lays out one of my new favorites: JOMO, or the Joy Of Missing Out. Social media helps foment marketers’ covetous construct of FOMO (the Fear Of Missing Out), where we look at everybody’s highlight reels on social media and think they’re having more fun than we are (which is not necessarily true). Kleon cites a rejoinder from writer Anil Dash: “There can be, and should be, a blissful, serene enjoyment in knowing, and celebrating, that there are folks out there having the time of their life at something that you might have loved to do, but are simply skipping.”
Kleon’s book is really a nice way of re-evaluating our priorities, habits and processes as much as it is a book about creativity. You can certainly miss out on this book — Kleon would support that, in theory — but it is also quite capable of bringing its share of joy.
InsideTimsHead 