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Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon

Buy from Amazon I won’t try to write a review of this great book by Austin Kleon because there are a lot of good ones available. (For example, this one in Spanish, or this one in English.) Steal Like an Artist takes out part of the mystique around creativity, and will teach you some very concrete ideas about creative work and how to approach it, in a direct, colloquial, and easy to read style. Read more...

Roba como un artista. Las cosas que nadie te dice acerca de ser creativo, de Austin Kleon

No voy a escribir una reseña de este gran libro de Austin Kleon porque hay muchas buenas reseñas disponibles (por ejemplo, esta en español, o esta otra en inglés). Roba como un artista elimina parte de la mística que rodea la creatividad, y expone de modo directo, coloquial y fácil de leer, ideas muy concretas sobre el trabajo creativo y cómo enfocarlo. La idea básica es que ninguna obra es realmente original. Read more...

Feedback and Being Vulnerable

Feedback is important. Most people will agree on this. But how often do we ask for feedback? My guess is that not very often. More frequently, we ask for advice. But asking for advice is a whole different story. It’s not the same to ask someone what she thinks about an investment option we are considering, than to ask her what she thinks about our work evaluating the same investment option. Read more...
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La importancia de ser vulnerables

Casi todo el mundo estará de acuerdo en que el feedback es importante. Pero, ¿con qué frecuencia pedimos feedback? Probablemente no con mucha frecuencia. Sí, por supuesto, pedimos consejo. Pero pedir consejo y pedir feedback son cosas bien distintas. No es lo mismo preguntarle a alguien qué piensa sobre una inversión que estamos considerando, que preguntarle qué piensa de nuestro trabajo evaluando esa misma inversión. Pedir feedback nos expone, nos hace vulnerables. Read more...

Ira Glass on Creativity

I found (again) this quote by Ira Glass of This American Life thanks to Tom Chandler of The Writer Underground. Ira talks about taking creative work from good enough to great. (You can watch the video of the segment after the quote, taken from a series on Storytelling.) What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. Read more...
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