The Best of Austin Kleon
10+ most popular Austin Kleon articles, as voted by our community.
Austin Kleon on Art
Artists must be allowed to make bad work
Art critic David Sylvester on the perils of working too much in the public eye.
«think is a bad tendency, to measure every artist by his last exhibition»
Quantity leads to quality
On the origin of a parable in the book ART AND FEAR.
«The frequency of my work — showing up at regular intervals, without worrying about results — has actually lead to better results. > Quantity leads to quality.»
Austin Kleon on Books
Books that suck you in and books that spin you out
Some books are centripetal - they suck you in - and some books are centrifugal - they spin you out.
«Some books are centripetal — they suck you in from other books. Some books are centrifugal — they spin you out to other books.»
Austin Kleon on Creativity
Austin Kleon on Patience
The principles of patience
Some thoughts on patience from Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks.
«Embrace radical incrementalism»
Austin Kleon on Writing
Leonard Cohen on perfectionism
“I found that things got a lot easier when I no longer expected to win.”
A blog post is a search query to find your people
How to find your people by being super specific and enthusiastic with your writing.
«If you do this, Karlsson says, “You will write essays that almost no one likes…. Luckily, almost no one multiplied by the entire population of the internet is plenty if you can only find them.”»
Popular
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The 30-minute noticing workout
Thinking about walking and attention with a little help from my friends.
«“If I had a jewel to give to people who want to live long and well, I would tell them to get up early in the morning and go out,” Ferrucci said. “That is really the best gift that you can give yourself if you want to achieve longevity.”»
I’m not languishing, I’m dormant
The reason that so many of us feel like we’re languishing is that we are trying to flourish in terrible conditions.
«We tend to see what we’re looking for, so if you hear the name for something, you start seeing it everywhere, and your eyes get trained to see that particular thing, while you miss everything else. (That’s why Paul Valery said that real seeing “is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.”)»
33 thoughts on reading
Shared by 344, including Kevan Lee 👋, Andrei Luca, Andreas Spiegler, ̗̀ ̗̀Manuel Marquina, Mark Kaigwa
Not knowing what’s impossible
Q: You got away with enormous technical advances, didn’t you? A: Simply by not knowing that they were impossible. Orson Welles on the genius in not-knowing: pic.twitter.com/uikbK3Q5ry — Austin Kleon…
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