· winning · 5 min read
"Keep Going" by Austin Kleon
Keep Going is a book about how to stay in love with your craft. The focus is on creative work, however many of the ideas in the book are applicable to a variety of domains.

Lately, something’s got me in a phase where I’m particularly interested in reading books about making art—like Art & Fear and Keep Going. I believe I first heard about Kleon’s writing from Ali Abdaal.
Keep Going sticks to Kleon’s classic, pocket-sized, lighthearted but heavy-hitting style. It’s a quick read, so I went through it a few times. With books like this, I like to make one pass through to jot down quotes and notes on passages that resonate with me and then wrestle with the ideas for a while before coming back to the text.
Notes | Keep Going
Take One Day At a Time
”There are no rules, of course. Life is an art, not a science."
"When I’m working on my art, I don’t feel like Odysseus. I feel more like Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the hill… I don’t feel like Luke Skywalker."
"We have so little control over our lives. The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on. What we work on and how hard we work on it… Yesterday’s over, tomorrow may never come, there’s just today and what you can do with it."
"Any man can fight the battles of just one day… It is not the experience of today that drives men mad. It is remorse or bitterness for something which happened yesterday or the dread of what tomorrow may bring.” - Richmond Walker in Twenty-Four Hours a Day
”How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” - Annie Dillard
Finish Each Day and Be Done With It
”Before you go to bed, make a list of anything you did accomplish, and write down a list of what you want to get done tomorrow. Then forget about it. Hit the pillow with a clear mind. Let you subconscious work on stuff while you’re sleeping.”
Establish a Routine
”When you don’t know what to do, your routine tells you."
"Rather than restricting your freedom, a routine gives you freedom by protecting you from the ups and downs of life and helping you take advantage of limited time, energy, and talent. A routine established good habits that can lead to your best work."
"Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Learn to Say No.
Saying “no” to the world can be really hard, but sometimes it’s the only way to say “yes” to your art and your sanity.
”I paint with my back to the world.” —Agnes Martin
”Creative” is not a noun.
”Let go of the thing that you’re trying to be (the noun), and focus on the actual work you need to be doing (the verb). Doing the verb will take you someplace further and far more interesting.”
Your real work is play.
”Great artists are able to retain this sense of playfulness. Art and the artist both suffer most when the artist get too heavy, too focused on results."
"You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow… Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow.” - Kurt Vonnegot, on writing poetry and throwing away the poems.
”You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then, you will be able to DO… Try to do some bad work—the worst you can think—and see what happens, but mainly relax and let everything go to hell…” - Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse
Ignore the numbers.
”Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” -William Bruce Cameron
”If you share your work online, try to ignore the numbers at least every once in a while. Increase the time between your sharing and receiving feedback. Post something and don’t check the response for a week. Turn off the analytics for your blog and write about whatever you want… focus more on what the work does that can’t be measured. What it does to your soul.”
Where there is no gift, there is no art.
”Suckcess”: success on somebody else’s terms, rather than your own. A kind of success worse than failure.
”There’s nothing as pure as making something specifically for someone special.”
Ordinary + Extra Attention = Extraordinary
”Attention is the most basic form of love.” - John Tarrant.
”If you want to change your life, change what you pay attention to."
"Pay attention to what you pay attention to… Reread your diary. Flip back through your sketchbook… Re-watch footage you’ve filmed. Listen to music you’ve recorded… When you have a system for going back through your work, you can better see the bigger picture of what you’ve been up to and what you should do next."
"The first step toward transforming your life into art is to start paying more attention to it."
"Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.” -Henri Cartier-Bresson on the differences between his two loves in his book, The Mind’s Eye.
”Drawing helps us live in the moment and concentrate on what’s really in front of us."
"By sitting somewhere and sketching something, I was forced to really look at it.” Robert Ebert said his drawings were “a means of experiencing a place or a moment more deeply.”
On page 137, like minded vs. like hearted If you want to explore ideas, hang out with people who are like-hearted, those who are “temperamentally disposed to openness and have habits of listening.” People who are generous, kind, caring, and thoughtful.
”I have to help other people” - p. 140. Take your situation and turn it into something that positively impacts others.
… TBC
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