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Welcome back to Shut Up Write Now, my lovely friends! This is the first of many upcoming book reviews I’ll be sharing with you. This post marks the beginning of my “Self Help Book Review Series.” Tpday, we’re covering Keep Going by Austin Kleon.
I’ve curated a bit of a collection/obsession with this genre, and I’ve taken some great points from most of the books. I’ll be letting you all in on some of my favourite parts of each book, and yes, there will be “spoilers” but I assure you, it is STILL worth buying the book for yourself, if not just to draw your own conclusions. I can’t do these authors enough justice by simply summarizing and adding my two cents.
As a disclaimer, the link I provide for if you’d like to buy the book yourself might earn me a small commission as an Amazon Affiliate.
I picked up Austin Kleon’s Keep Going on a whim while browsing Indigo one day. At the time, I hadn’t heard of his first book, “Steal Like an Artist”, which I now know is the book Kleon is best known for. Though I do now own that one as well, and I do love it, Keep Going is still the one that gives me a creative boner.
He opens the book with a line that really resonates with me— “I wrote this book because I needed to read it.” I’ve heard this said in the form of advice many times, but seeing it actually be attributed by an author as a contributing factor in the writing of a book is pretty inspiring.
His messages throughout the book are all pretty bang-on, honestly. My key takeaways from it are scribbled all over my notebook, so I’ll clean that up for you in point form:
– It’s important to come to terms with the fact that life might NOT get any easier. This shit is always going to be hard, no matter how you slice it. Whether or not we spend our lives waiting for it to be LESS hard is the question. I took this to mean that it’s key to live in the now, and enjoy the now because working/creating for an eventuality COULD very well be fruitless. How can we possibly ever know? I found this really helped me mitigate my expectations already.
Living an easy life is incredibly boring. I’ve worked my fair share of boring jobs— for example, I worked for over a year as a receptionist at an office where the phone very seldom rang, and I felt like I was being paid to sit there on the off chance that it did. And the managers were AWARE of this, and just didn’t really care that I resorted to actually reading at my desk to pass the time. This may sound like the dream to some, but hot damn was it ever mind-numbing. I really, really missed being challenged on a day-to-day basis.
Creative life is NOT linear. It will be absolutely full of ups and downs, and you’ll always have to work hard to navigate that. You may never really be satisfied if you’re just always waiting to be able to throw cruise control on and put your feet up. That time MAY come, but it may not, so it’s easier to manage your expectations and feel good about where you are now— anything else that comes later is just gravy.
– Kleon also goes into detail about why routine is so key to creativity. I always felt like “having a routine” meant I had to force myself to get up a 6:30am every day and drag my ass to the desk and do something until it was time to get ready to work, but it doesn’t have to be like that. He explains that “to establish your own routine, you have to spend some time observing your days and your moods.” When I take the time to review my existing habits, I can see that while I CAN be productive before getting ready for my 9-5, it’s not always the best time for me. I now schedule some easy reviews for while I have my first morning coffee, but I won’t ever commit myself to writing 1000+ words before I get in the shower. I know that would stress me out and add unnecessary pressure to my usually chill morning routine.
If that’s how you prefer to operate though, more power to you! The message here is that you need to personalize your routine to how you operate and make sure you’re able to put your best self in the chair and make the best of that time.
Another tie-in with this point is the importance of To-Do lists. I’ll admit, I’m garbage at these. I’ll write them out, and I get satisfaction from scratching a task off the list, but I can also go days without actually looking at the list, and stay in limbo on those in-between days and just take tasks on as they come. Then it’s suddenly been a week and I forgot to do a couple of super easy tasks I could’ve crossed off the week before. Ergo, my new routine does include regular references to the lists, and I now have the lists in multiple places.
– “Finish each day and be done with it” is another great point from this book. Something I’m working on personally is separating a “bad day” from a “bad life.” I’m prone to spiraling at the best of times, and my loved ones know that sometimes the best way to support me is to remind me of the good things that happened that day, or recently. Hell, I know now that even a “bad morning” can easily be reset at noon to enable me to have a good afternoon. As long as you make it to the end of the day, it’s been an inherently good day.
A key to setting yourself up for a good day is to NOT go right for your phone when you wake up. I used to do this all the time. I now have adopted a version of a philosophy Brené Brown explains in “Daring Greatly” (which we’ll cover later): her “30 before 7:30” has become my “don’t touch the phone until I’ve been awake for an hour.” This USUALLY just applies to work-days, so I can have my coffee, and relax a bit before heading to the office, but on weekends/holidays I will indulge in messages to make plans and such— but NO NEWS. Very seldom do I scroll our local and global news apps and come out feeling good and inspired. Kleon writes that “you can be woke without waking up to the news.” A-fucking-men.
Kleon also quotes Anne Hamott in this section: “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes— including you.” These days, it’s absolutely crucial to unplug now and again. Whether it’s for an hour in the morning, or for half an hour before you go to bed, or from 2pm-5pm while you try to pack as much productivity as you can into the latter part of your day, unplugging can do you wonders. Take that time to do for a walk, do some reading, do a face mask at home and paint your nails, just do something that will refresh you.
– It’s been almost two years of this global pandemic, and many of us have become accustomed to very small social circles, and/or spending much more time alone. As things begin to open up again, you may be invited to any number of get-togethers, or events that will take you out of your routine, and while that’s absolutely fine to do now and again, it’s also fine (and often important) to say no. Kleon explains how it’s important to say no to things that will prevent you from saying YES to yourself, your art, and your sanity. Essentially, have boundaries to protect yourself. You will thank you later.
Similar to actual contact with people, it’s okay to say no to the online world as well. It can be so, so easy to get sucked into online metrics, page counts, obsessing over how many “likes” your last Instagram post got, or how many new subscribers you earned on YouTube. Separating yourself from personal and virtual connections now and again can help your mental health.
To that end, I’ve also learned recently that the post you shared, or the piece you painted, that you poured your heart and soul into, might NOT be the top post on your virtual canvas. You might think it’s absolutely divine, and if you believe that, then it IS. Please do not be discouraged if that post ever for some reason gets ¼ of the reactions that your other posts tend to get. It is so important and inspiring that we are all unique individuals, and you may not be everybody’s cup of tea. Your worth is not defined by likes and follows. #subscribetomyemailupdatesthoughplease
Kleon asks “Who are you trying to impress?” And the answer had better be YOU, baby. If I wrote this blog with the intention of trying to impress every other person in British Columbia, I’d never ever ever ever ever get to hit that Publish button. Never ever. Not just because I know I’m DEFINITELY not everybody’s cup of tea, but because our world is so heavily divided on almost every topic. Nothing I write could impress everybody.
I cannot put into words how much I love this book. It literally KEPT me GOING, which is right there in the name. As a reminder, there are SO MANY other great points in this book, so please don’t hesitate to give it a read yourself.
To sum up, I’ll quote Kleon one last time before you can dive in and binge his works for yourself: “The world doesn’t necessarily need more great artists. It needs more decent human beings.”
Mic drop.