It turns out that the secret to getting off your ass and doing something is… getting off your ass and doing something. Kleon’s book is parts manifesto, pep talk, tough love talk, to do list, and art held together with some humor, good intentions, and a vision of the world where more people actually get off their asses and create.

Which makes it pretty awesome, unless you are determined to be a hardcore cynic, in which case I suppose you decided the book was ridiculous based on the title. It is not.

Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use — do the work you want to see done.

If this manifesto resonates with you, go get the book. I doubt you’ll be sorry. You’ll probably be inspired, and you’ll want to share it with others. There isn’t a great mystery here, the ten key points Kleon makes are listed right on the back of the book:

1. Steal like an artist.
2. Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started.
3. Write the book you want to read.
4. Use your hands.
5. Side projects and hobbies are important.
6. The Secret: Do good work and share it with people.
7. Geography is no longer our master.
8. Be nice. (The world is a small town.)
9. Be boring. (It’s the only way to get work done.)
10. Creativity is subtraction.

I liked that he calls out the secret right there, point number six, in case you might miss it. In other words, the secret is there is no secret: get off your ass and do something.

Creative side projects have been important to me for a long time now. I think, after reading this book, I will try and apply the ideas to not just my side projects, but to my day job. The list of things Kleon says you’ll need to be creative seem to me to be necessary in my new gig: curiosity, kindness, stamina, and a willingness to look stupid.

I highly recommend this book. I think it will be good for the creative and procrastinating and sometimes scared (most of us) and the not certain they are creative, but yes they are and need a nudge to embrace new ideas (all of us at some point).

I’d been looking forward to reading this book since I first heard of its existence and more or less patiently waited for it to be released in the US. Here’s the quote that convinced me despite any misgivings I may have had, that I needed to read it:

So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that’s what poetry is. That’s what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is.

It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.

Oh yes. This was going to be a Winterson book that mattered, one that wasn’t — despite being a memoir and so carrying an even greater risk — going to being all ego ego ego. Winterson being Winterson, she plays with form and doesn’t do the conventional thing, and pulls it off. It’s a story about motherhood, about needing a mother, and being lost and finding your way and how this is all messy and uncertain and you do things anyway when you have no choice, or feel like you have no choice. It’s about figuring out what love is and what it isn’t and how really, ‘what love is’ is an unanswerable concept that you keep trying to answer.

I think the title is brilliant. I suspect if you were any kind of weirdo as a kid, you understand the question in your bones.

Recommended if: you are a Winterson fan, you were raised by religious extremists and you aren’t one yourself, if you enjoy writers’ memoirs, if you want to read an unapologetic argument as to the vital importance of stories in all our lives.

This book is a quirky and pleasant object: it features sort of cardboardy covers, an interestingly flat/matte feel to the illustrations, and inviting, expansive margins with the text. Handling it, I saw that Seth Godin, Tom Peters, and the Nelson Mandela Foundation blurbed it. Okay, that got my attention. Not that I give tremendous weight to blurbs, but I do pay attention when they are by people I like, or they are an unexpected mix.

In this book, John Hunt (Worldwide Creative Director at the advertising agency TBWA) offers seventeen observations, and artist Sam Nhlengethwa illustrates them. The feel is provisional, collaged, open instead of fixed, and the intention is to provoke thought to lead to forward motion.

You may not expect to hear things like this from an advertising guy, but:

If something is fundamentally bad or wrong, it’s pointless trying to embroider it with good ideas. If the premise is false, no amount of great thinking is going to change that. Yet time and time again, ideas are asked to fight lost causes.

It would be pretty easy to soundbite this book (“no one orders a bouquet of beige flowers”, “logic is kryptonite”) and make is sound like something fluffy and easy to snarkily pick apart, but that isn’t the point. The point is to provoke yourself, and hopefully those around you, to more open thinking, to engage with ideas and change things as a result.

Original thinking needs a longer leash. Continuously taking your mind for a walk to exactly the same place doesn’t really exercise it. You can’t connect different things together if what you’re seeing is always the same. It’s because you know the narrow confines of your particular space that you have to venture further afield. The gap between what you already know and what you’re exploring is often where the best ideas pop up.

Recommended if: the bozos are getting you down, if you want a source of inspiration close at hand, if physical books about creativity make you happy.

This books is a beautiful object. Of course you’d expect the illustrations to be wonderful (and they are stunning) but Penguin went the extra mile and provided pages with a wonderful texture to them (literally) and made the book just a bit larger format than a hardcover usually is. The story is Sís’s interpretation of the twelfth century Persian poem. I am admit to not knowing anything about the original source when I picked this book up.

So I’d say you don’t need to know anything beyond what you find in these pages to enjoy the journey Sís takes you on. The poet is transformed into a bird, and leads the birds on a quest, though “the birds realize that this will be a difficult journey and are reluctant to give up their comforts.” They attempt to cross seven valleys: the valleys of Quest, of Love, of Understanding, of Detachment, of Unity, of Amazement, and of Death. There is risk, uncertainty, doubt, fear — and determination, recognition, and faith.

If you are already a fan of his work, don’t hesitate to pick this up — though know if you usually buy his books for little people, children are not the primary intended audience for this book. (Not that it would be bad for kids… and older readers may appreciate it.) If you are drawn to Muth’s Stillwater panda books, or particularly his Three Questions, this will probably resonate with you as well. Definitely recommended.

This book is far more interesting than one might think, given the title. (Unless productivity porn is your thing, in which case it is that interesting but not what you’d expect.) I believe it started off life as an article in The New Yorker (“The Checklist”), and in an all too rare turn of events deserved to grow to full book length.

Gawande’s insight is as simple as it is radical: checklists, when well-designed, can make experts dramatically better at what they do. In operating rooms, using checklists can save lives. In building enormously complex structures, they can prevent serious problems and correct issues before they are more expensive to fix. Checklists made is possible to fly the B-17 bomber, and help make commercial air travel safe. The power of checklists isn’t limited to risk reduction, either: checklists can be used to successfully promote communication and working as a team. If this sounds in the least bit dry, it’s because I’m not doing Gawande’s writing justice — he has a knack for telling stories.

The real mystery is: why aren’t aren’t checklists more widely deployed? Experts resist them, because they fall into the trap of thinking they know better — rather then seeing the checklist as a tool to let them act more effectively to leverage their skills and insight. And checklists aren’t revenue-generating the way a blockbuster medication or medical device can be — though they can be responsible for enormous cost savings. Creating checklists and refining them can be a thought- and labor-intensive process, and it requires behavior change, something most of us are not as good at or willing to do as we might believe ourselves to be.

After reading this book, 1) I was grateful for aviation checklists, as I am a nervous flyer, 2) determined to ask about the use of checklists in the operating room if anyone in my family needs surgery, and 3) curious to see if I can implement checklists in my work environment.