Book Summary: Keep Going by Austin Kleon
When creating stuff is your job, it can start to feel, well… like a job. Austin Kleon recognized this in his own work and decided he needed a book about how to keep creating despite setbacks. When he couldn’t find a book with the answers, he wrote his own. Here are some of my favorite tips from that book, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon.
“There is a kind of success worse than failure.” -John Cocteau
1. Define success. Austin defines success as, “When my days look how I want them to look.” Your definition can be measured by a career milestone or sense of self. Whatever it is, know it and stick to it. Otherwise, you could easily fall into the gravitational pull of what Austin calls, “‘Suckcess’… success on somebody else’s terms.” Suckcess is the default when you are trying to please people. Eventually, suckcess will crush your creative spirit. As John Cocteau said, “There is a kind of success worse than failure.”
2. Drop market terminology. Make room in your life and the lives of others for relaxation and joy. When somebody makes a signature cocktail for your party, resist the instinct to tell them they are good enough to open a bar, restaurant, speakeasy, etc. Instead, tell them what the gesture means to you, personally.
“‘Do what you love’ + ‘I deserve nice things’ = a time bomb.” -Austin Kleon, Keep Going
3. Draw the line. Know what you will and won’t do for money. This goes back to your definition of success and how much money you need to make that success a reality. Knowing this makes you sure that you are working for the right reasons. Drawing the line is easier when you keep expenses low. Austin explains the danger of creative work and high expenses, “‘Do what you love’ + ‘I deserve nice things’ = a time bomb.”
4. Make gifts, not side hustles. It’s great to have skills, but they don’t need to be lucrative. Some things provide value that we can’t express in dollars and cents. For more on this, check out Ann Friedman’s article, Not Everything is a Side Hustle.
“No artist can work simply for results; he must also like the work of getting them.” -Robert Farrar Capon
5. Let go of metrics. Online work can quickly be measured quantitatively — did it get likes? views? retweets? But these metrics can’t measure our work qualitatively. Austin finds that sometimes the work he likes best doesn’t perform well quantitatively. He makes it anyway and that helps him to keep going. As Robert Farrar Capon explains, “No artist can work simply for results; he must also like the work of getting them.”
6. Recognize the impact of monetizing your passion. When money enters the picture, it’s easy to take the fun out of a project and make it a burden. Consider having a day job to keep you alive and a hobby to give you life.
7. Recover outside the market. You may get frustrated with your work. When you feel this way, Austin suggests stepping away from the market and doing your thing just for fun. Do you make scarves and sell them on Easy? Try making one for your friend’s birthday instead. Graphic designer? Try drawing something for your kid. Making a gift has the two-fold power to reignite your creativity and bring joy to someone else.
Thanks to Austin Kleon’s publisher, Workman, for sending me a review copy of Keep Going. There was no financial incentive to write this article.
BONUS. Be like a nun. Sister Mary Corita Kent made the common things “uncommon.” She would transform the trash of Los Angeles into art that shared the message of God’s love, like using a bag of Wonder Bread to communicate the idea of Holy Communion. When you can create with whatever you’re given, imagine how sharp you’ll be when you get back to the studio.