Episode 598
· 35:34
Before we get started with the episode, I just wanna give you a quick heads up that a productive conversation has officially moved hosts. Not me, the place where we host the podcast. So if you're hearing this, everything worked just fine. But if you ever have any issues, you can always find the latest episodes at aproductiveconversation.transistor.fm. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's get on with the show.
Mike Vardy:Welcome to A Productive Conversation. I'm Mike Barty, and it is way back week, which means we revisit a conversation from way back one, and it's with none other than Austin Kleon. Now before we get into that conversation, Austin was kind enough to provide us with a quick update on what's been going on. He'll share that with you right after this. But then from there, we dive into the rituals and rhythms that support creative work, how boundaries help protect attention, and what it means to truly pay attention in a world full of noise.
Mike Vardy:Austin's reflections are thoughtful, funny, and incredibly useful, whether you're a writer, an artist, or just trying to find a better way to move through your day. So without further ado, let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Austin Kleon. But before that, let's hear from Austin himself as to what's been going on in his world since our conversation almost a decade ago.
Austin Kleon:Hi, Mike, and hi, Mike's listeners. Been a while since we talked. I somehow have managed not to publish another book yet. I find that it's a lot more fun reading books than it is writing them. But I am working on a new book.
Austin Kleon:It's gonna come out next year. It's called Don't Call It Art, and it's a list of 10 things that I learned from being around my creative kids when they were really little. It's about having fun, not taking your work too seriously, and going about your art and creative work with a sense of play. And other than that, I've had a really fun time with my weekly newsletter, which has become a twice weekly newsletter, actually. So if you like what you hear today in this, interview, I hope you'll pop over to austincleon.com and sign up for my weekly newsletter because I think we have something like close to 300,000 readers now, and it's my favorite thing that I do online.
Austin Kleon:So thanks.
Mike Vardy:Thanks so much for joining me, Austin. It's been it's been something that I've been wanting to do for quite some time.
Austin Kleon:Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Mike Vardy:So you've got a new book coming out. And actually, as of as of now, it's it's pretty much out in the wild. It's keep going 10 ways to stay creative in good times and bad. This seems to be the book that creatives need right about now.
Austin Kleon:I I hope so. I mean, I I think everybody needs it. I needed it. I mean, that's why I wrote it. It's it's a funny thing because I you know, my other books were written for other people.
Austin Kleon:Steal Like an Artist was written for, like, a younger, dumber version of myself. Show Your Work was written for my audience who kept asking me all these questions about self promotion. This book was the first book that I wrote because I needed to read it myself. And so it sort of is a departure in that sense, you know, and I and I think, like a lot of people, particularly in The States, we kind of, you know, you keep we just keep waking up every morning, and it seems like things have gotten dumber and meaner overnight. And to add to that, I think every creative person I know is kind of hitting up against the wall of realizing that, like, creative work doesn't necessarily ever get any easier, you know, that it's always kind of a struggle to constantly reinvent and and come up with new ideas.
Austin Kleon:And so I wanted to write a book about how to have a more long term approach to this stuff and to simply pull yourself through the days.
Mike Vardy:Well, one of the things that you talk about right out of the gate in the book, and this is something that I know will appeal to the productivity folks that are listening, is the idea of because there's so much kind of chaos may not be the right word. I'm gonna use it anyways. In the day to day life, the importance of having routinization and being and having routines. You talk about like a daily routine. What does yours look like, and why do you think that having a daily routine, maybe not just even a morning routine, but something that is consistent throughout the day or even just a morning and evening routine is so important?
Austin Kleon:That's a great, great question. I personally think that I think creative work is like I think it's a verb. It's like an activity. It's like you're an athlete or something, you know? I think think it's Haruki Murakami who's written about how much training to run helps him write novels.
Austin Kleon:But I think that, you know, creative work is about getting in there every day and and having a daily practice, and I think routine is the thing that really makes sure that you do that practice every day. If I had to describe my routine, I'd probably borrow John Waters' quip that he thinks things up in the morning, and he sells them in the afternoon. So the morning is kind of my creative time. I get up with our kids who are super young. I have a six year old and a four year old boys, and we get up in the morning, we have breakfast, and we kind of putter around, and then my wife will get up, and I'll get her coffee and breakfast, and then I'll come up, and I'll write for a couple hours.
Austin Kleon:And then we have lunch together, and I get my kid on the school bus, and then I come upstairs and I do all the things that kind of the the more admin based stuff, you know, I'll answer emails. I'll do a podcast like we're doing now. You know, I'll do the kind of more business end stuff, and there's something about having that routine. And I keep fairly nine to five hours, I would say, like, just like a banker, basically, banker's hours. And I I think for me, there's something about the morning that's more more I've always been kind of a morning person, and that's where I try to, you know, cram all my creative work into.
Austin Kleon:And then the afternoon, I've always thought is this weird mongrel time as Dickens called it, where I don't know that many people who are afternoon people. So I kind of you know, this is the time where I like to take calls and stuff like that. And then in the evening, I just try to unplug and hang out with my family, and then I read a bunch. So that's pretty much like generally what the day looks like. And then there's always a walk in there somewhere.
Austin Kleon:I walk with my wife every day. We take about a three or four mile walk. So
Mike Vardy:One of the things that you bring up in the book is the idea of having a place, like a place where you can go and kind of do the creative work. And I think that I've talked about this a little bit before, about having productivity zones in my office where certain work happens in certain places. And I've seen your I mean, you make no bones about sharing that, both on your blog as well as in the book. How did you come to the decision of what your you call it a bliss station looks like, but also how has it evolved, and does it continue to evolve?
Austin Kleon:So, yeah, the bliss station idea is something I stole from Joseph Campbell, and his idea that you had to have a place or a certain hour of the day where you kind of felt safe and secure, and you could kind of access your more creative side. The thing that I'm always really zoomed in on with that is that he says there's a place or a time, and so I think sometimes for some of us, you know, if you're a mom with young children, you might not have a place because you're in this crammed house or whatever, but you might have a time, you know? So, like, you might be able to take nap time or the few hours before your kids get up or at night or something like that. So I think sometimes, you know, the Cadillac treatment would be, you you know, the really luxurious thing would to be have a place and a time. But I think if you don't have time, a place will help a lot.
Austin Kleon:You know, like if you just need to squeeze things in, a dedicated place helps. And then I think if you don't have a place, then time can be your friend. But I think that there's something about when you do that daily practice or you do that thing that gets you in the mode every day, it helps to return to a place to be regular about it or to do it at a certain time. And there's something about the repetition, I think, that it's it's ritualized. You know?
Austin Kleon:It's like when you sit down at a desk, you know, okay. It's time for this work. And I actually have two you know, you mentioned different zones for doing different kinds of work. I actually have an analog desk, and I have a digital desk in my office. And so right now, I'm at the digital desk because I'm, you know, I'm talking to you, and we're on Skype and doing that kind of thing.
Austin Kleon:And then my analog desk doesn't have anything electronic on it. It's just paper and pencils and notebooks and stuff. And I have a set time for to go there, you know, in the morning and try to let the ideas happen. And once the ideas happen, I'll pop over to the digital desk and, like, write about them for a while or I'll, you know, blog something or share online. And a lot of my day is a kind of dance between those two desks.
Mike Vardy:One of the things that and I think it was Jean Cleese that said that in order to be truly creative, you need time and space. You can't have one and expect to put your great creative work out there, and same thing with the other. So if you have too much time and not enough space, you feel cramped, you feel constrained. And if you have too much space, but not enough not enough time, you feel hurried. And I think that one of the things people get caught up in, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, is just the pace of the world and the pace of the day.
Mike Vardy:How do you combat that? Because, I mean, yes, when you get into your own space and you have your own things going on, and I I know you mentioned in the book about the idea of and I don't do this either, waking up and jumping onto any of these, you know, myriad of news sites to learn about what's going on in the world is not exactly the best way to start your day. But how do you combat, like, this this speed of life and this idea that it's go go go fast fast fast now now now in in a world where you're trying to really put forth your best possible creative work?
Austin Kleon:It's a constant struggle, you know? I mean, it's nothing that I have completely figured out, and I'm just as lost some days as other people. But I do know that, you know, what I know for sure is that creativity is definitely about connection, and that you have to be connected to the world in order to be influenced and inspired by it and to have something to say about it. But then you also have to disconnect from the world long enough to discover what it is that you actually have to say about it or what your work is. And so it's really this dance between connection and disconnection that that makes the work, and that is actually part of the work.
Austin Kleon:And for me, it's just being connected is easy. I mean, you know, I'm connected all day long. We all are. I mean, I've got my phone in front of me, you know, too often, but the trick is disconnecting. I just think the easiest way to disconnect is to not connect in the first place.
Austin Kleon:So I just that's why I love the morning so much. I mean, I really try not to check email or get on Twitter or Instagram or any of that stuff in the morning. I fail a lot, you know, but I just try to schedule, and this is where the routine comes in. I just try to schedule disconnection time, you know, where no one can find me and I'm just in the zone, you know, but it's difficult. And it's particularly difficult with children, and particularly when you're at home with children because interruption is the sole fact of your life as a parent.
Mike Vardy:I've got it's spring break here right now as we're recording this, so both of my kids are at home. I've got a fourteen year old and an eight year old. So they have a bit more self management control than I think you're sprouting to after. And actually, here's an interesting thing that that I wanna talk about boundaries because I think that that you've you've just touched on that, the idea of having these boundaries and these constraints because I think they're needed. One of the things that I've done is, and I did this for years because I've been working home for years, is I got a simple, you know, like the hotel do not disturb signs that you hang outside your door.
Mike Vardy:Right? Bone in. Yeah. So all I did was was I have and it's the only like, I have it outside my door, and if my door is open, come on in. If my door is shut, please knock first, and then I'll respond.
Mike Vardy:If the door is shut with the door knocker on it, don't even don't even in fact, what's funny is my son to this day, and this has been like five years in the making, he assumes that I'm doing a podcast if there is a sign on the door. Even though I might be doing a coaching call or something else like that, or I might not be doing anything at all in terms of meeting with someone, I've just there's this boundary that's been created. How important for you are setting up, like, just simple boundaries that you can adhere to, and then, again, making sure that you respect them so that others do as well?
Austin Kleon:Oh, man. So important and so hard. They're just so young right now that they just don't really understand that, you know, what do you mean dad has to go work? You know? It's funny because my my kids just think that they don't really understand that people go to jobs.
Austin Kleon:Their idea of what work is is so bizarrely twisted. And it's funny because my father-in-law is a great writer, but he writes for a newspaper. So he has to go to, like, to the office every day. And we were staying with them for a while, and he would get dressed and, like, ready for work. And my kids would just be like, what do you mean grand grandpa's where is he going?
Austin Kleon:Why is he dressed up? And so they just don't really understand work, and and I am I'm pretty fluid right now as far as, like, whether we're playing or we're working. Like, I had Owen, my oldest, in the studio with me today just because he was being such a pain to his mom, and and we were just, like, working together. And I don't know. Boundaries are weird right now because I just don't have that many.
Austin Kleon:But, like, you know, today, I'm I've done exactly what you do, which is, like, the door's closed if not locked, and there's a sign, a do not disturb sign, and, you know, everybody knows what's going on. So but I think that, you know, it's you the biggest thing that I think about boundaries is something that my wife said, and she and she said, if you never go to work, you never get to leave work. And so that is particularly helpful, I think, for people who work at home, which is if you're never in dedicated work mode, then you never get out of work mode. You know? It's just kind of this like so I think that's why for me, like, the hours are so helpful to just like, no.
Austin Kleon:I keep bankers hours. Like, I don't check email after dinner, you know, or, like, I don't jump on the computer first thing in the morning, you know, to have those boundaries of I I think that's actually a Cleese thing. He says boundaries of time and boundaries of space, you know? And to have those boundaries is is essential, I think.
Mike Vardy:Well, and I think one of the things that you talk about in the book, and this is this is not necessarily new, go figure from the guy who wrote Steal Like an Artist, is the idea of, yes, you're and I'm a creative too, so I get this. See things whatever you're looking at, whenever you're out in the world, you will see things, and it could inspire you. So you talk the idea of having a notebook with you or a phone with you, I think that still allows you to kind of foster that creative side of you without necessarily breaking a boundary. Right? Like, you quickly take a picture.
Mike Vardy:You kind of know what that means, or you'll revisit it later, and we'll talk a bit more about, you know, the mess and and and and all that stuff a little bit later. But I think that that element needs to be there too, because then you've got some flexibility built into it so that you're not feeling, hey. Okay. I've punched the clock. It's done.
Mike Vardy:I've got to shut off my creative brain because, let's face it, it doesn't shut off.
Austin Kleon:Yeah. I mean, that's you never I mean, I think that is the big trade off with a with a life of creative work because it's just, you know, you're you're just never off, really. I mean, you're never completely done with it, and you're never completely unplugged. I mean, that's something that my wife is just such a great kind of gauge for this for me is whenever I'm feeling extremely lazy or like I haven't done a lot lately. I mean, she just reminds me all the time that, like, you know, you're just never off.
Austin Kleon:Like, you're always you know, you've always got your notebook in your pocket. You know? I mean, you're you're never off. So but I but I do think that just because your mind isn't off doesn't mean that you need input from others. You know?
Austin Kleon:I think that's the that's the real thing is to not be pulled by any anyone, to to do your own kind of to be doing your own pulling at a certain point. You know? I I I feel like during the day, you know, the minute you open Twitter or you open email, someone can pull your mind in another direction that you might not want it to be pulled. You know? And so it's more of like a freedom thing.
Austin Kleon:Even though you're always on and your brain's always on, like, it's more about the freedom of pointing your attention in the direction you want it to go rather than having it scattered.
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Mike Vardy:Now, let's get back to the show. See, I'm a big believer that productivity isn't about speed and efficiency and all that. I believe it's a marriage of intention and attention. I think, after reading your work for a number of years, again, going through Keep Going, that seems to be a really prevalent message in there. It's like where your attention goes, and this comes up in the book actually, the idea of attention.
Mike Vardy:How do you help, or how do we get more people to realize that as much as time moves on, and again, you touch on this later in the book as well, to think things in terms of attention more necessarily than, let's say, the passage of time?
Austin Kleon:Yeah. I mean, I think attention can alter time. I mean, we know what that and I think you can just do some simple experiments to kind of prove that. I mean, everyone's had that kinda relative relativity experience where you're completely immersed in something and the hours just fly by, you know, versus watching the clock tick. That's just one example, but to really get people to understand that your life is really what you pay attention to, that, like, that is exactly what life is made of, is just a really hard step.
Austin Kleon:And it's hard to, particularly in writing, talking to writers, trying to get them to understand that, like, your work is made up of what you pay attention to, and it's and then you the way that you kind of discover what it is that you have to say is that you pay attention to what you pay attention to. As Amy Krause Rosenthal said, the late great Amy, and she's in the book, I I just love that, you know, paying attention to what you pay attention to. It's it's it's kind of a it's a line that that has two meanings. One, it's a caution. You know?
Austin Kleon:It's a cautionary thing. Like, well, just pay attention to what you pay attention to because what you pay attention to is your life. And then the other side of it is the way to figure out what your life is and what you're up to is to pay attention to what you've been paying attention to, you know? So I in a very concrete way, like a lot of people talk about writing a diary and the kind of the a lot of people talk about diaries in terms of the therapeutic now. A lot of people write diaries because it makes them feel good in the moment or they're getting something off their chest, or it's therapeutic at the time, and then they never go back through their diaries.
Austin Kleon:But I'm one of those people I don't maybe I'm strange, but I find that rereading your diaries is a matter of orientation. It really shows you where you've been and in what direction you've been headed. And maybe it's just because my memory for what happens to me is so terrible, but when I go back through my notebooks, it's a it's a matter of, like, pattern recognition. Like, I can really figure out, you know, what it is that I'm actually trying to get at here this week, you know, like what's been what's been preoccupying me, and and I just find so many clues by going back through my notebooks that that pay attention to what you pay attention to is just like a really powerful thing.
Mike Vardy:Well, if you're strange, then I'm strange because I do the same thing. Go back and I actually make a point of I actually have and this is where I think you talked about the idea of having a memory that needs remember almost like a reminder of what happened, because I tend to use because I capture so much that I now have become this person that relies on the capture habit more than the retention habit, because my journaling and where I put it ends up becoming the thing that I can go back and reflect upon. And then you can course correct. I'm not a guy who necessarily does what the traditional weekly review or anything like that. I'll go back and look at it's kind of like Star Trek.
Mike Vardy:Right? Like the captain's log. Here's where we were. Here's where we are now. Here's where we're going.
Mike Vardy:And then, oh, crap. We veered way off course. How the hell did that happen? Oh, this is how it was because I was feeling this way or because I didn't pay attention to this. Do you do you think that because you you of the the fact you're so prolific with what you captured, that that may have that that you need to journal and diarize because, hey.
Mike Vardy:Listen. My mind isn't necessarily being a warehouse. It's now being, you know, a factory, which is what it really is designed to do.
Austin Kleon:I mean, that's an interesting way of putting it. I I've always felt like I had a really terrific memory for things that I read or things that I hear or things that I take in through media almost. Like, I I can remember things that I read. I can remember things I watch. I can remember things I listen to.
Austin Kleon:I have a really bad memory for what happens to me, and I I can't figure out what that says about me. Maybe that just I've been distracted, you know, from my life by all these different forms of media that I love, but I don't know for sure what that means about me. I just know it works, but I think that, you know, I just think the most poisonous thing about our modern moment right now is that everyone wants you to be somewhere other than where you are right now. Like, if you think about, you know, where you're grounded in the world right now, like, what your, you know, where your feet are resting and what you're looking at in front of you and, like, what you're feeling and that place, literally everything in the world wants you to think about something else than that. You know?
Austin Kleon:I mean and it's in the interest of the media companies to do that, you know, to pull you away from your own life into these other places and times. And and, of course, you know, sometimes we want to be somewhere else. You know? That's what art and literature and film and everything does for us, but I think the coolest thing that making art and making literature and making film can do is to, you know, kinda train you to pay more attention to where you are in the world. And I think that's what it also does for the reader or the viewer is that it trains them to really pay attention to their own lives.
Austin Kleon:And I think we're losing some of that through just the endless stream of constant bombardment of media that we get now through Twitter and Facebook and all that stuff.
Mike Vardy:You know, when as I go through your work, not just this book, and this book is full of this stuff, but when I go through your your work, there's a lot of, you know, reference to material that you've read that isn't from, you know, necessarily the modern moment, like blog posts or books that are recent. Like, we're looking at like Thoreau, And even books that, you know, you're like, oh, like, I forgot about that person, or I never or or I never even I never even thought that this person could relate to necessarily to like, Brian Eno. I know he's a creative, but it's like, he's a music like, there's there's that connection that you've talked about earlier, and you're able to connect those those ideas, those thoughts to your work. Do you find yourself looking to the older texts, the older media, the older more and more for to inform not only your work, but maybe the message you're trying to put out there, as opposed to say what we're seeing now. I'm seeing that more and more, and some of that stuff is just timeless, if anything, we need that stuff now more than ever before.
Austin Kleon:Yeah. I think if you're like a serious thinker or, you know, I don't think of myself as a very serious person, actually. I'm kind of more of a I don't know how I think of myself, but it's not necessarily serious. But if you're a student of your craft and you're a student of writing and art and you're not going back as far as you can go, I mean, you're you're really hobbling yourself. I mean, there it sounds really, you know, it's this sounds absurd, but I'm not sure there's a lot of progress in art.
Austin Kleon:I mean, I I as far as linear progress goes, I think that there are cycles, but I think that, you know, as human beings, we kinda circle the same things over and over. And I just find, for me personally, there's something about reading old texts that makes it just strange enough that you will do the work of relating what they're writing about to your own moment. So when you read Thoreau, and he's like, I have given up reading the weekly newspaper because, like, I just can't be two places at one time. There's just something so, like you know, when I read him writing about that in his journal, it just it makes such a greater impact than reading a blog post someone writes about how Twitter is just making them so upset, you know, because there's there's just this universal feeling when I go back in time with Thoreau where it's just like, here's a dude who, you know, a hundred and fifty years ago, he was like he was dealing with the same exact problem. It just wasn't so massive.
Austin Kleon:You know? And then you kinda readjust yourself because you're like, okay. Well, if a weekly newspaper was too much for Thoreau, maybe a weekly paper would be the perfect amount for me. You know what I mean? So but there's there's just something about, like, I just think we're in a culture of the now and, you know, to to divorce yourself from human history is it's it's, you know, it's it's a kind of malnourishment, you know, to to not honor what came before you.
Austin Kleon:And, of course, there are always new problems, so there's always new writing to be done, but, you know, the part of the joy for me of being a writer is to help people go back upstream, so to speak, like swim back upstream to find their way to other things that they might not have been passed down.
Mike Vardy:As we get close to wrapping up, I wanna share one piece from the book that I you know, as I got close to the end and, again, anyone who's listening right now, which is obviously the person listening right now, you should be picking up this book because there is so much great stuff in here, but this one particular I mean, the blackout artwork at the end. I plant my garden because what else can I do but fool around with time? So I wanna ask you, how do you fool around with time?
Austin Kleon:Well, we're doing it. You know? We're doing it right now. We're fooling around with time. I mean, I think that, you know, time is the thing you get, and you don't know how much time you get and how you how much time you're gonna get, but I think time is exactly what we're up against, and it's exactly the the real kind of currency that we get to spend in this life.
Austin Kleon:And I think how you spend your time is is you know, Annie Dillard, she says, you know, how you spend your days is how you spend your life, you know? And so to not waste it, And if you're gonna waste it, to waste it deliciously. You know? To really to waste it in the best way you can, I think, is is is the best thing you can do, but that's that's all we're doing? You know?
Austin Kleon:We're just playing around with time, the time we get, and we're just filling the days. And hopefully, you just fill them as well as you can.
Mike Vardy:Austin, thanks for joining me today on the show. Of course, can get Keep Going, 10 ways to stay creative in good times and bad on Amazon. Where else can people get it, and where else can people learn more about you and your work, which they definitely should do?
Austin Kleon:Well, I I always encourage everyone to head to their local bookstore and check out a copy there. And if they don't have one, get Hellmoor to one, and you could also check out your local library. Head in there. And if you wanna hang out with me, I'm at austincleon.com.
Mike Vardy:That's a wrap on this episode. If you liked what you heard, the best way to support a productive conversation is to share it or leave a quick rating or review wherever you're listening. You can find everything we mentioned at mikevardy.com/podcast59eight. Thanks for listening, and until next time, I'm Mike Vardy, the host of a productive conversation reminding you to stop doing productive and start being productive. See you later.
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