Weekly Geek Outs - 08/05/16

Greetings!

Here's what is on my mind this week:

• Creativity

I had a great chat recently with Craig Bidiman for the podcast about art therapy. We got into the creative process and the value of having creative hobbies. I write, I podcast, and I enjoy engaging with the creative products of others. Other people draw, do coloring books, paint, sing, or any number of other things. It doesn't matter what you do or if you do it for others or just yourself. It just matters that you do it. It is important to nurture different parts of ourselves outside of our day to day lives and work.

• Collaboration

I've had the opportunity recently to collaborate with Kayley Robsham writing for the Check I'm Here blog. I really enjoy bouncing ideas around and I think active, positive, and focused collaboration helps produce better outcomes. I work now in a far more collaborative environment then where I came up before, so I feel spoiled with all the different venues for great collaboration going on right now. I also enjoyed featuring a lot of great content from other writers for my #SAGeeks series. They were able to write about a lot of different things that I could never get to myself. It is important to bring other people in to help us do the things we can't or the things that don't come as naturally for us. The world would be better for it if we all could contribute our unique strengths to the greater good.

• Communication

In addition to my writing, podcasting has been a very fulfilling creative endeavor for me in many ways. I've been able to have conversations with amazing people in our field, learn many different things, and build up skills I wouldn't have the opportunity to otherwise. My new job also really helps me cultivate my communication abilities. I have to talk to a lot of different people about a lot of different things every day. Communication has always been a struggle for me. I'm very grateful for this opportunity to build these skills as well as use my experience and expertise from student affairs to help serve students in a very unique way.

Thanks for stopping by!

Book Review: Show Your Work!

This recent work from author Austin Kleon aims to address the issue of getting your work discovered in our modern, busy, noisy world.

Much like his previous book, Steal Like an Artist (which I also reviewed here), it is an unconventionally written book, with a very brief, casual voice that focuses on some simple, but actionable tips. Kleon delves into things like being authentic, utilizing social media and other platforms to share content (your own and others), as well as just sharing your story and having fun with the process of creating. I don't think any of these tips are revolutionary, but seeing them here as well as other books and articles I've read further reinforces the advice. I do my best to embody many of them already, and it has been effective, so it deepened my commitment to keep it up after reading this book.

I will say that Kleon's work is probably not for everyone. I appreciate the candid, casual feel to these books and others like it, but it I have started to think that many will see them as too simplistic and too cavalier. It assumes a lot I think to just lay out the advice these sort of books do (essentially, just do it and the success will come) since I think life is a lot more complicated than the way these sorts of books convey things. They also seem to convey a bit of privilege at times that makes the advice less accessible to most people. From my point of view, not everyone can just drop everything and go for their "passion". People need to be able to pay their bills and live their lives while not having to worry about if their art is going to make them enough money. Thankfully, Kleon does acknowledge this a bit by seeing a lot of people as working a full-time day job to fund and supplement their creative "side hustles", and if you can make money off of this effort, that's great but it isn't necessary. This is refreshing and far more realistic from my point of view. Not everyone is going to have the time or the money to devote to creating a living for writing from nothing, and it is important to acknowledge that with a book like this. I'm glad this one does.

With all that being said (just had to get that out) I think this book, and Kleon's other work, Steal Like an Artist, are great starters for someone looking to nourish a creative hobby and looking to get it noticed too. I know I write for myself, but I'd also love for my writing to help and positively impact other people. I write from the heart and it's awesome to connect with other people through it.

Check out Show Your Work! and purchase it at any of your favorite book retailers.

Thanks for stopping by!

Book Review: The War of Art

I just recently blew through The War of Art, an interesting and unique self help book from author Steven Pressfield about the creative process. I'd had it recommend by some people as well as seeing it come up based on my Amazon history, so since it was available for very cheap through the Kindle store, I figured I'd give it a try.

This was a very quick read with some good takeaways in it but the most intriguing part of the book is how it is written. It has several short points to make instead of drawn out chapters and takes a very deep, meta, philosophical view on being creative and committing to creating. It personifies things like "Resistance" and the "Muse" and preaches for a strong devotion to working to create each and every day. This strong devotion that he elaborates on in the book sort of takes on a viewpoint similar to how theories are explained, in a context of all other things being constant, which is hardly realistic but still allows for some helpful advice.

I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who struggles with creative blocks. While it sometimes lacks practical tips, it makes up for it by going into the psychological and philosophical elements of how we create, and why it can be such a struggle sometimes. The first big step in dealing with a problem can be awareness of it and understanding it. This book is a great place to start in terms of getting towards a more natural creative flow and acknowledging that we're all creative, no matter what we may think, we just need to focus, commit, and get to work refining our craft.

You can check out some more info about Steven Pressfield and The War of Art (as well as his other books) at his website.

Thanks for stopping by!

Book Review: Think Like a Freak

"The modern world demands that we all think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally; that we think from a different angle, with a different set of muscles, with a different set of expectations; that we think with neither fear nor favor, with neither blind optimism nor sour skepticism. That we think like—ahem—a Freak."

Think Like a Freak is the 2014 book from Freakonomics bloggers and podcasters Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. This time around, they focus on capitalizing on their previous works and showing us all how to think a little differently.

I'm a big fan of the Freakonomics podcast, and I wanted to check out some of their writing so this recent work seemed like a great placed to jump in. I appreciated the idea of taking their perspective into action, since a lot of articles and books will simple present a viewpoint and then not give examples of how to put it into action, so I'm glad they took it the next step here.

Topics in the book include incentives, problem solving, metrics, and knowing when to step back when you don't know something. The authors showcase very different perspectives on conventional wisdom, which I think we can all use more of in our lives.

"Solving a problem is hard enough; it gets that much harder if you’ve decided beforehand it can’t be done."

The advice I gleamed after reading the book is be more curious, be less stubborn, and measure success. All of these can be easier said than done but it is crucial to simplifying our complicated world to do our best to do our best to live these values. We can't assume success, assume we know all the answers, and stop asking questions. We'll become stagnant in a world that will quickly leave us behind.

"...the stakes get higher when we routinely pretend to know more than we do."

I encourage you to check out all of the Freakonomics stuff out there. It is great stuff to get outside of the normal framework of how we look at our world. I know you'll get some valuable advice from their work.

Thanks for stopping by!

Book Review: Steal Like an Artist

"If we’re free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running away from it."

I remember hearing about this book at some point. It got stuck in my head as something I knew I wanted to read at some point but just never got around to. I finally blew through this book and I am very glad I made time for it.

This 2012 book by Austin Kleon explores the traditional concepts about what we think creativity is and how we are creative and seeks to break them down. Kleon challenges conventional notions and builds up his own view on how we maximize our own unique creativity and stop preventing ourselves from creating. His liberating manifesto that nothing is original helps the reader break free of the oppressive mindset that we have to reinvent the wheel in order to be a creative. All we have to do is put our own spin on what is already out in the world and that makes something valuable and creative.

Kleon's style of writing is brief, engaging, and transformative so it is right up my alley. I was able to breeze through this book with some powerful takeaways in the matter of a few nights. I feel like I could have easily read through it in a day if I was commuting or had a few more hours free in a day to plug in with this book. I appreciate when books can be concise since it allows for the message to come through so much clearer for me when there isn't massive amounts of what ends up feeling like filler. Just because a book is longer doesn't make it better, but that's just me.

If you're looking to get inspired to be more creative or just want a great book to get motivated by for your current endeavors, I encourage you to check this book out. It's a quick but powerful read with some great perspectives on how to be a better creative.

Steal Like An Artist is available at all of your favorite book retailers which you can find at the book's official webpage.

Thanks for stopping by!

Book Review: The Good Creative

"Be bold and brave with your art. Venture courageously with it into the unknown." - Paul Jarvis

I discovered this book through a promotional effort by the author, Paul Jarvis, for his recently launched podcast, Invisible Office Hours that he does with fellow cool person Jason SurfrApp (AKA Jason Sadler). He was giving away digital copies of The Good Creative for those that listened to the podcast and gave honest reviews, good or bad. I was intrigued by the podcast through recommendations of some awesome folks on Twitter so I listened, left my (positive) review, and got the book to check out. I got to it after I finished some other reading projects, and I blew through it in a day. I say that as a good thing.

The book, which reads more like a collection of blog posts than a dense tome, is a straightforward, concise collection of 18 tips from Jarvis about how to find personal satisfaction with the content you create. Your definition of success and whatever you make is up to you. He just helps you get there.

The book came out recently in April, and one in a series of other books by Jarvis about working freelance and creating a life as a "good creative". I found this one to be very applicable to my work running this blog (and where I hope it will eventually go). The writing is authentic, light, engaging, and actionable. Some of my favorite tips were about not feeling like you're "selling out" if you get sponsors or get paid to do your work as well as his advice about being authentic and telling your story. Something cool and unique about the book too, there are some really neat illustrations in the book to go along with all the tips.

I highly recommend this book! You can get it as a digital copy, a physical book, or an audiobook all on Paul's website.

If you read it, let me know what you think!

Thanks for stopping by!