Thank you , , , , , and the 500 others who tuned into my live video with yesterday!
Join me for the next one on Friday at 11am EDT — I’ll be talking & drawing with special guest, Two-Time Pulitzer Prize-winning Cartoonist, !
About The Guest:
Austin is the New York Times bestselling author of a trilogy of illustrated books about creativity in the digital age: Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going.
His books have sold nearly two million copies. Two million. That's even more than the 27 of mine that sold this month! They've been translated into over 30 languages (including Australian.) New York Magazine called his work "brilliant." The Atlantic called him "one of the most interesting people on the Internet," and The New Yorker said his poems "resurrect the newspaper when everybody else is declaring it dead."
He also does talks for organizations such as Pixar, Google, Netflix, SXSW, TEDx, Dropbox, Adobe, and The Economist. This is the kind of client list that makes freelancers weep into their instant noodles.
With that intro out of the way, here is the recap of our conversation. At the bottom, I’ve also included a full list of books recommended or discussed during our one-hour talk.
Comedy Over Tragedy: What Austin Kleon Taught Me About Creative Survival
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of chatting with the brilliant mind behind Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, and my personal favorite, Keep Going. What started as a conversation about creative routines turned into a masterclass on attention management, the importance of play, and why treating your art like a comedy might be the secret to actually surviving as a creative person.
The Magic of Knowing What You Like
Austin started by dropping one of those deceptively simple truths: "Knowing what you like is this kind of magic tonic for your attention." It sounds almost embarrassingly basic, but as he pointed out, "we live in this world where everyone else is trying to tell you what to like constantly."
The problem? If you don't know what you actually like, "how are you going to know what you're supposed to make? Because really, what we make is more stuff like we like. We take all the things that we like and we put them together and that's our work."
This hit me hard because in previous years, I've been guilty of the exact opposite: creating things that get likes rather than things I actually like.
Austin's approach is refreshingly honest: "Only I actually know what I like, right? And so my reading life, for example, is so much richer when I just focus on what I really, really like to read."
The Brian Eno Prescription for Focus
Austin's been studying Brian Eno for over a decade, and shared Eno's current obsession with attention management. The key insight: When you truly know what you like, “you can tune in to what you're supposed to be paying attention to. It gives you focus."
This connects to something profound he observed about kids: "Kids know what they like, especially know what they don't like." They're naturally discerning in a way we somehow unlearn as adults. As Austin put it, his kids were "almost like an executive... they were very, I like that. I don’t like that—and I loved it." (He has a book coming out soon called “Don’t Call It Art” expanding on the value of this insight.
The Artist's Survival Guide
Here's where things got real. Austin shared a quote from art coach Beth Pickens that completely reframed my thinking about creative work: "Artists are people for whom their life is less when they don't work." Not that they can't do anything else, but that "my life suffers when I'm not making stuff."
The guilt around "selfish" creative time dissolves when you realize you're not just indulging yourself – you're showing up to your work, so that you can feel more alive inside, so that then you can show up for other people.
The Tragedy vs. Comedy Framework That Changes Everything
This might have been the most brilliant part of our conversation. Austin breaks down how most people think about art through the lens of tragedy: "a very special person with a gift who struggles and fights against the world... and then you know, it takes a great toll on them. So they have to shoot up heroin or whatever. And then when they get success, they get rich and they drink themselves to death."
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to New York Cartoons to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
