Nothing good comes easily in life and in creative life, sometimes you feel exhausted to keep producing more contents, but not getting enough reward from it which is the downside. Some people have passion to be a full-time blogger and content creators like Youtubers, but the reward is not forthcoming to allow the person focus on online content creativity full time. If you find yourself in this situation, what will you do? This is where this motivational book “Keep Going” by Austin Kleon come into support to give readers different perspectives and encourage you not to stop now.
Austin talks about 10 ways to stay creative in good time and bad. This inspirational book is for entrepreneurs and others. In this book Austin Kleon talks about that the world is getting crazy, creative work is hard and nothing is getting any easier which every content creator can relate to. In his previous books – Steal like an artist and Show your work! New York times bestsellers with over a million copies in print combined – Austin Kleon gave readers the key to unlock their creativity and then showed them how to share it. Now he completes his trilogy with his most inspiring work yet.
The book “Keep Going” gives readers life-changing idea, illustrated advice and encouragement on how to stay creative, focused, and true to yourself in the face of personal burnout or external distractions. He talks about how to build a bliss station – a place or fixed period where you can disconnect from the world.
Also, how to see that every day is Groundhog Day – that yesterday’s over, tomorrow may never come, so just do what you can do today. It is about taking one day at a time. Creative work is not a straight-line journey and understanding there is not finish line would help. How to forget the noun, do the verb – stop worrying about being a “painter” and just paint. You got to stop focusing on the result but rather enjoying the process. You got to keep working, keep playing the game, keep searching, keep giving, keep living, keep going.
Doing the things, you have passion for is the key, the monetary aspect would take care of itself. If you are creating contents with money in mind you will not have the zeal to carry on when the rewards are not forthcoming. Austin talks about protect your valuable, find something that keeps you spiritually alive and being mindful of impact of monetizing your passion. He encourages content creators to resist the urge to monetize every aspect of creative work and keep little piece for yourself.
Establish daily routine would help make the most of your days. It is about being flexible, try and error and prioritize what can be done in your limited time.
Make a list would help to organise and pick the pressing thing to work on and compete it then delete it from the list as job done. It is about having the courage to start and make necessary adjustments as you go along.
Creativity is about developing free flow mentality to share your energy to the world. In law of attraction, you need to freely give to receive. This is the reason to keep going and enjoy what you are doing like you are playing a game you like. However, it’s important to disconnect from the world around us to focus on your inner mind. Austin talks about developing a hide and seek mentality to produce something worth being found.
He found his bliss station in his garage, somewhere you can have a quiet and serene moment, where you will stay to help bring your ideas to bear.
It would help not to wake up with the News as you wake up, if you wake in the morning and go straight to the news it increases your anxiety and chaos of the day.
A lot of creative people work best as the woke up with fresh minds when nobody wakes them up or call his/her telephone line. It is about removing the distraction that hinders your creative mind. Telephone gives us information at the same time remove discovery ingredients such as loneliness, uncertainty and boredom that helps our creative ideas.
Austin talks about developing an airplane mode, an opportunity to reconnect to yourself and your work.
You can learn how to say no, you don’t have to follow the group or having this mindset of missing out. Saying no may give you opportunity to say yes to your work and sanity.
Ignore the numbers that it is easy to focus on online metric and money forget the main passion that drives you to do what you are doing in the first place. You should not focus on short attention spam and quick hit. It pays to think for long term. This book encourages content creators to ignore the numbers at least occasionally, post something and don’t check the feedback just focus on creating value and qualitative work which nourishes your soul.
Understanding how to make extraordinary things from ordinary circumstances and materials that you do not need to have extraordinary life to make extraordinary work. You do not need to wait for a golden opportunity or waiting for a perfect time to start sharing your work, just start little by little with ordinary idea you have. It is a slowing down and take thing easy as you go along. Austin encourages creator to pay attention to what you pay attention to, likewise he talks about show me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are.
Use your creative work to help people to reconnect their lives with fresh eyes and possibility. When our creative work is ruining our life, it is not worth making. This book talks about do not rule out quitting as you never know if your time might be better spent somewhere, and you may discover opportunity elsewhere.
You can change your mind, understand that you need other people to help us think, this book encourages content creators not to argue with strangers on the internet. You get nice feeling and comfortable with people who like the same music, art or from the same culture at the same time it can be boring. So, it is important to explore ideas from people who are like -hearted instead of like-minded.
This book encourages one to do a good thinking by reading old books and finding old ideas that everybody has forgotten and bring it to life as it helps to think outside the box.
Keep your tools tidy and your material messy and do not equate productivity with creativity, that people are often most creative when they are least productive. Like myself, I can relate to this as I often leave books hanging around in my office as I can refer to them easily and you rediscover things as you work your way through clutters. Sleep tidies up the brain so taking a nap is excellent. When you sleep your body flushes out toxic stuff from the body and rejuvenate your physical and mental wellbeing.
Being less despair and more repair, leave things better than how you found it.
Try to do exercise to dispel daily depression, Austin talks about that during morning walk is where idea is found. “That demon hate it when you get out of bed. That Demon hate fresh air”.
Creativity is long view it pays to think long term and see it like gardening. Gardening requires patience and attention that every day is a potential seed that can grow into something beautiful and magical. It is exactly the message all of us need so I thought to share this with you. This book deserves your attention.
A nice book.