Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

by Austin Kleon

“What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?”

It’s more like a loop, or a spiral, in which you keep coming back to a new starting point after every project.

It is remorse or bitterness for something which happened yesterday or the dread of what tomorrow may bring. Let us therefore do our best to live but one day at a time.”

To establish your own routine, you have to spend some time observing your days and your moods.

“The simple thing I’ve learned over the years is just to have a starting point and once you have a starting point the work seems to make itself,” he says.

Creativity is about connection—you must be connected to others in order to be inspired and share your own work—but it is also about disconnection.

Airplane mode is not just a setting on your phone: It can be a whole way of life.

Thank the sender for thinking of you, decline, and, if you can, offer another form of support.

When people use the word “creative” as a job title, it not only falsely divides the world into “creatives” and “non-creatives,” but also implies that the work of a “creative” is “being creative.”

careers. Art and the artist both suffer most when the artist gets too heavy, too focused on results.

“Don’t rule out quitting.

Your bliss station, your studio, a paper journal, a private chat room, a living room full of trusted loved ones: These are the places to really think.

When you sleep, your body literally flushes out the junk in your head.