Art, Books and Connections

The last few years I have been reading business, entrepreneur, psychology, leadership and education books almost exclusively.  Daniel Pink, Seth Godin, Robert Cialdini, Sir Kenneth Robinson, Malcolm Gladwell are among the many different authors whose books I have explored.

With each book I read, I start by putting a 4 x 6 inch post it note inside the front cover to keep track of interesting words, concepts, people, websites and books as I read.  I also take notes in the books and use colored coded post-its to mark the pages.  For whatever reason, I use orange to mark ordinary notes. I feel they are the ones I want to be able to refer to later, but are not mind blowing.  I use yellow for the mind blowing ideas.  Pink are specific quotes I want to be able to use in the future and blue indicates connections between ideas. 

Before I started to use different colors, I noticed that many authors refer to each other's books or at least to the same books during their discussion of ideas.  In fact, it happened often enough for me to specifically mark those incidents.   

One of the things I have long thought is, with all of the connections between books I have read, is there a theme that winds through all of them that ties them together?  

Today as I was doing my Austin Kleon Steal Like an Artist Journal, I chose one which is an unlabeled web. with the instructions "Start in the Middle."  For lack of a better term at the time, I chose "Art" as my central word. I am using the definition of art I derived from reading Steven Pressfield's book The War of Art. To me Pressfield is saying that art is beauty created through someone pursuing their passion.

After I chose my word, I started placing names of authors and books I have read in the last few years in the circles in the web.  Unfortunately, the names I put in the list do not always come from the circle which precedes it. I think my best bet is to take my books and go into an empty room and examine the blue post its to attempt to determine which books inspired the others and how they fit together. Possibly then I will finally be able to create  a singular idea that each book explored to some level.  

The Perfect Summer Activity: Steal Like an Artist

This summer in my house we are all working on creativity.  After reading Austin Kleon's book Steal Like an Artist, I bought three copies of his Steal Like an Artist Journal for us to fill out. Each day we choose one entry to do then we may or may not share what we have written or drawn.

The tasks Kleon includes in the journal ask the reader to take mundane objects and look at them in a new way. He encourages the reader to draw, listen, see, speak and feel using items or ideas such as: find an old receipt and try to recall as much as possible from that day. Ask someone to coffee and afterwards write everything that was discussed. Write your favorite quote and then say it in 5 different ways. I also love "Stare at this dot until you get an idea." One of my favorites is "Climb Up Your Own Creative Family Tree"  where you identify who inspires you and then who influenced them, followed by who inspired the people who inspired the person who inspired you and so on. This exercise could take the entire summer, or an entire lifetime.

My first entry was from the page "10 Things I Want to Learn"

They are:

1.  Fishing
2.  3D printing programs
3. Steps showing how people learn
4. juggling
5. Guitar
6. principles of drawing
7. design process
8. investing
9. Spanish
10. video editing

It is not all that often where adults encounter a list like this. In a way it may be a "bucket list" for me since many of these topics are those that even experts may continue to learn their whole lives.  Maybe that means it is a good list.  It would be interesting to fill out this list every few years and compare with previous lists to check on progress and/or changes.

As I peruse the book, especially at the entries I have already made, it seems that each entry has unstated steps which must be done to fully make it a creative endeavor, rather than something to do to check boxes to indicate completeness. One example is "10 Things Lying Around that No One is Using." The follow up is where the creativity comes into play.  Should they be put together in a poem, picture,  or story, taken somewhere and donated followed with a description of the next phase in their lives?   When looked at in terms of being creative, there is no end to the book.