Lessons learnt from How to steal like an artist

I don’t know how many of you follow this, but I recently started this habit of asking ChatGPT about acting like a constructive critique, analyse my personality from all the day to day conversations we have and recommend me books based on things I can improve with proper reasoning for every suggestion.

It has suggested me quite a good reads like “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant“, “Talking to Strangers“ and the one which I recently read “How to steal like an artist“.

This book changed my perspective of how I perceived creativity. This one quote which stuck with me from the same book

“You shouldn’t want to look like your hero, you should want to see like your hero“.

These are the few things which stuck with me and I have either already incorporated these in my life or I will soon. Here goes the list

1. Nothing in this universe is original, as also said in the Bible “There is nothing new under the Sun“.

2. Creativity = Pre-existing thoughts and ideas re-imagined or remixed.

3. A method which I learnt and am very curios to try out is, Think about who you superheroes are (people whom or whose work you look upon to), go as deep as you can and understand/observer each piece of their work and their thinking philosophy. Then create your own thought tree and see what if some of your heroes collaborated and made something. Think about that or build that and most probably this remix would be uniquely creative and somewhat your own.

4. Creativity is stealing and making it better, whereas Rip-Offs or de-graded products are just failed attempts of trying the same.

5. Garbage in - Garbage out: You might know this already, “Always surround yourself with people better than you” or simply put “If your are the smartest in the room, its high time to change the room“. As the environment reflects on one’s work.

6. Try engaging with your work as much emotionally as you can. If you’re an artist, there are tools nowadays where you just click, drag mouse or hit buttons on the keyboard and get stuff done. Same goes for most of the professions nowadays, separate out an analog and a digital setup (or just keep aside your laptop in separate table drawer) and scribble things out using pen and paper get the good old touch and feel of paper. For engineering backgrounds, use notebook for drawing flowcharts and charting out thought processes, you’ll feel much more deeply engaged with your work.

7. In this digital-era, where everyone is chasing cheap dopamine at the cost of lowered attention spans. Take a step back and embrace boredom. Book some time for yourself where you just get “bored“. Stare a random spot on wall, lay on your bed and look at the ceiling, stand in your balcony/garden and watch the trees. This is the mental state where you’ll encourage creative ideas to form.