Hacker News Books

You can try "Steal like an Artist" if you are looking for a quick and easy read.

Steal Like An Artist bypasses all the middle-brow arguments about superficial copying versus deep understanding. You can attempt to learn from the comments here but the faster way is reading that book.

Perfectly captures the philosophy, very short, and recommended by many.

That's pretty much the idea espoused in _Steal Like An Artist_. Read and write a lot. Pick your heroes. Sponge up their stuff. Make more stuff.

I recommend reading Austin Kleon's 'Steal Like an Artist' for a more thorough discussion: http://amzn.com/B0074QGGK6

Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon for me. It's a quick read perfect for my short attention span. It packs a lot of practical advice without the fluff.

Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon for me. It's a quick read perfect for my short attention span. It packs a lot of practical advice without the fluff.

Maybe all creativity is just mimics who repeat things and add a little bit of variation.

I think the book Steal Like an Artist addresses this.

RIP, Gerald Weinberg

There's a less know book written by him:
Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method

It's the only book I've found that teaches you how to steal like an writer, which the book Steal Like an Artist advocates but doesn't get into how to actually do it.

Cool idea. I signed up. Also, I think you could add a sample bio to the site to boost your conversion rate.

Austin Kleon (the author of Steal Like an Artist, and Show Your Work!) talks about reading obituaries every morning as a tool to help clarify priorities and to remind yourself that interesting people often led non-linear lives.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/12/austin-kleon-show-y...

I've had quite the opposite experience, the only people who claim they've got original ideas--and entrepreneurs who want you to sign NDAs to protect their "great ideas"--are the ones who have never made anything on their own.

There are entire books on this subject. Austin Kleon's "Steal Like an Artist" is perhaps the most engaging one right now. Get it. Read it. Quit putting "ideas" on a pedestal.

Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative is a great book on similar themes. (The sequel Show Your Work! is also good) Also Creating a Life Worth Living had a huge impact on me - it's full of interviews with creative types of all kinds, and talks about how many different ways/styles of structuring your time and life there are, and how to find one that works for you.

When I was a jazz musician in my early 20s, I did a lot of negative self-talk on gigs. "Oh, that was awful! Oh yuk, Argghh that sux. Nooo...Terrible" etc. It made me sound terrible. Self-torture. Then I read a book Effortless Mastery, from which I learnt Never criticize yourself on gigs. The time for that is when you practise. And since then I never do that. I just enjoy myself and play. It really changed my life. And also learning about loving yourself - realizing that it's all too easy to be careful about treating other people well, always being kind, while being extremely mean to yourself. Louise Hay's How to Love Yourself is the book on that subject, I think.

I think maybe the only way to be a good artist though is to explore the things that resonate with you. If rap-funk-metal-folk-electro-bluegrass speaks to your soul, and creating that music fulfills you, then who’s to say exploring those genres is a mistake? There are other measures of success than recognition.

Austin Kleon puts this especially well in “Steal Like An Artist.” He says that you can cut off some of your passions, and try to focus on one thing, but eventually you will “feel the pain of the phantom limb.”

I’m not the GP, but I feel like “unlearning” often relates to the need to feel certain.

When looking for a solution, is the path straight? Or is it curvy, full of alternatives that appear strange at first? Staying with the strangeness is part of the unlearning. :)

Take a look at these cards[0] for their fun (and creative!) prompts to look at problems (and the world?) differently. To look in different places, in different ways. To juxtapose and separate.

Take a look at some books (typically grouped under “creativity” on amazon), such as “The Artist’s Way”, or “Steal like an Artist”. “Bird by Bird” is another book I’ve enjoyed.

Some things/tricks/ideas/perspectives will click while others won’t. It’s ok to pick a path. Some tricks will work best at one time or another. That’s also fine — part of the unlearning is accepting that too.

Best of luck and feel free to reach out!

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies

Let's get this out of the way from the start, you're definitely not lacking something. Like most things you can get pretty far with deliberate practice. The front end is usually a combination of usability, design and code. It sounds like you need help with the usability and design part.

The first step of awareness means you're on the right track. You've also developed a sense of taste because you've recognized something is distinctly better than the other. Ira Glass has a great way of framing this concept [https://vimeo.com/85040589]. You can close this gap of ability vs taste by continuing what you're doing. If it feels confusing and difficult, you're making progress. It will take a while to constantly probe at the "why" something is better. Next you'll learn how to apply it.

If time is a constraint there's a way you can accelerate your learning. You'll have to ask someone who is better than you for feedback and advice. This works really well. If you have the resources and don't feel the need to learn, you can always pay someone to do it.

There's a lot more I can go on about but feel free to reach out if you need some help. Here's some additional random thoughts:

- Don't get too caught up in the design and elegance of your front end design. Show it to people, they will help guide what you need to work on.

- It's okay if things look like a copy of something else. We can learn a lot through imitation.

- Pay attention to software you love and really try and understand why you love it. (Sounds like you're doing this already)

- Check out these books: Steal like and artist, the design of everyday things.

- Read through Apples's HIG docs, there's lot of great stuff there on mobile and app design.

- Empathy is a critical tool when making interfaces for others. Really try to understand the problem you're trying to solve by getting in the minds of the user. Usually the solution comes pretty naturally.

- By exposing yourself to lots of different kinds of software and apps you'll start developing a sense of what works where. Like when do I use a slider vs a numerical input.

This isn't exactly relevant to the article, but somehow shares some of the spirit of what happens to us as we educate/inform ourselves more:

"this very real thing that runs rampant in educated people. It’s called 'impostor syndrome.' The clinical definition is a 'psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments.' It means that you feel like a phony, like you’re just winging it, that you really don’t have any idea what you’re doing."

- Kleon, Austin (2012-02-28). Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

I am guessing:

Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon

http://austinkleon.com/2011/03/30/how-to-steal-like-an-artis...

• The Prize

• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

• The Lean Startup

• Poke the Box

• The Elements of Computing Systems

• The Death of Common Sense

• Up the Organization

• The Personal MBA

• The Wisdom of No-Escape

• The Adapted Mind

• Brain Rules

• Getting Things Done

• On Writing

• Steal Like An Artist

• George Orwell: A Collection of Essays

And these are technically not books, but Glenn Greenwald's "Speech to the Massachusetts ACLU" and the Christopher Hitchens speech criticizing the proposed Canadian hate speech law.