Unleashing Creativity: Side Projects, Hobbies, and Productive Procrastination
Hey, friend, Welcome back to my weekly newsletter. I hope you are doing well. We often think about hobbies as a side gig or to earn some more money but that's not the only thing about them…
As I discussed in a previous newsletter, the book I was reading was "Steal Like an Artist" by Austin Kleon. I read this book completely last week. It was very interesting and short to read, even if you are not a book reader. Read it once on my suggestion, and if you want to read my previous newsletter about this book, you should check it out here.
Side Projects and Hobbies
Austin talks about why side projects and hobbies are important, when we play around with this messing stuff, magic happens. We should have a lot of projects at once; if you get sick of one project, move on to another. When you are sick of that one, move back to the project you left.
— Practice Productive Procrastination —
If you have two passions, do not try to pick and choose between them. "Let them talk to each other. Something will begin to happen".
Take time to be bored; just sit and do nothing. Some of the best ideas come when you are bored. If you are out of ideas, Do some laundry, wash some dishes, and iron your clothes.
Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.
— Artist Maira Kalman
Do Good Work and Share with Others
Most of the world doesn't care about what you think or what you do, and that's a good thing because you and I only want attention when we are doing good work. Try or experiment with something until people pay attention to us because we have no extrinsic prestige to manage, no paycheck on the line, and no stakeholders. You will never get this freedom back once people start paying you attention, especially once people start paying you money.
— Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts. Use it. —
Step one "Do good work" is incredibly hard, with no shortcuts, Step two "Share with Others" is simple compared to ten years ago, "Put your Stuff on the Internet". If you are worried about sharing your secret, share a sketch or doodle or snippets about your work, share what creates some value for people, and share your dots without connecting them. You have control over how much you want to reveal.
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
— Howard Aiken
That's it from my side. I hope you like my effort to put this stuff in front of you. This book has a lot more interesting topics, which I'll try to cover in an upcoming newsletter. Until then, please share your valuable feedback and share it with your fellas. Good Bye...
Note: This is not the complete book overview, so be gentle.