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

If you ever find that you're the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.

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.

You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.

You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see. You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing.

The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there's a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively. They only collect things that they really love.

Be curious about the world in which you live. Look things up. Chase down every reference. Go deeper than anybody else--that's how you'll get ahead.

You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.

Not everybody will get it. People will misinterpret you and what you do. They might even call you names. So get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored -- the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.

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.

Always be reading. Go to the library. There’s magic in being surrounded by books. Get lost in the stacks. Read bibliographies. It’s not the book you start with, it’s the book that book leads you to. Collect books, even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Filmmaker John Waters has said, “Nothing is more important than an unread library.” Don’t worry about doing research. Just search.

The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best—write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career:

Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find your self.

Google everything. I mean everything. Google your dreams, Google your problems. Don’t ask a question before you Google it. You’ll either find the answer or you’ll come up with a better question.

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

Keep all your passions in your life.

Pretend to be making something until you actually make something.

So go on, get angry. But keep your mouth shut and go do your work.

In the end, creativity isn’t just the things we choose to put in, it’s the things we choose to leave out.

School is one thing. Education is another. The two don’t always overlap. Whether you’re in school or not, it’s always your job to get yourself an education.

Don't wait until you know who you are to get started.

when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.

Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.

Find the most talented person in the room, and if it’s not you, go stand next to him.

If you’re worried about giving your secrets away, you can share your dots without connecting them.

Pretend to be something you’re not until you are—fake it until you’re successful, until everybody sees you the way you want them.

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.

Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts.

The thing is: It takes a lot of energy to be creative. You don’t have that energy if you waste it on other stuff.