Steal Like an Artist

01Why Absolute Originality Is a Dangerous Lie

Has the terrifying fear of being totally unoriginal ever stopped you from starting a meaningful project? We often falsely believe that true geniuses create masterpieces out of thin air, entirely untouched by the world around them, but this is a deeply paralyzing myth. When we are asked to create something new, whether it is a painting, a business plan, or a simple blog post, we often freeze in our tracks. We look at the towering historical figures of art, business, and science, and we mistakenly assume that their brilliant ideas sprang fully formed from their minds. This expectation is the single greatest obstacle to doing meaningful work in any field. If you believe that you must conjure a flawless masterpiece out of absolute nothingness, you will likely never write a single word or draw a single line. The pressure is simply too immense for any human being to bear. Austin Kleon beautifully points out that this kind of immaculate conception in creativity simply does not exist in the real world. Every new idea is merely a mashup, a remix, or an evolution of one or more previous ideas. Recognizing this reality is not a demotion of human genius; rather, it is a profound liberation from an impossible standard. Once you finally accept that nothing is genuinely original, you can stop frantically trying to invent something out of nothing. You can take a deep breath, look around at the incredible wealth of human history, and start playing with the materials that are already generously scattered before you. The French writer André Gide famously noted that everything that needs to be said has already been said, but since no one was listening, everything must be said again. Your job is not to find a completely untouched patch of intellectual real estate. Your job is to collect good ideas, study them, dismantle them, and put them back together in a way that reflects your specific perspective. Think about the way we naturally learn language as young children. We do not invent our own completely original vocabulary; we listen closely to our parents, we mimic their sounds, and eventually, we use those borrowed words to express our own unique thoughts and feelings. Creativity operates on the exact same fundamental principle, requiring a deep immersion in the works of others before we can articulate our own vision. You are, in essence, a complex mashup of what you choose to let into your life. Just as you carry the biological DNA of your parents, you also carry the creative DNA of your artistic influences. You are the sum of your influences, which means that the more diverse and fascinating your inputs are, the more unique your creative outputs will eventually become. To start stealing like an artist, you must first learn to look at the world differently, adopting the sharp, discerning eye of a passionate collector. An artist does not look at a piece of work and judge it purely as good or bad; instead, they ask themselves if there is something worth stealing. This shift in perspective transforms the entire world into a giant, endless treasure hunt. When you read a book, watch a movie, or listen to a conversation on the train, you should constantly scan for fragments of inspiration that you can pocket for later use. Kleon highly recommends keeping a swipe file, which is simply a dedicated notebook, folder, or digital document where you store all the brilliant little things you stumble across in your daily life. It could be a beautiful sentence from a novel, a striking color palette from a billboard, or a clever marketing strategy from a local business. By actively collecting these fragments, you are building an enormous reservoir of raw material that you can draw upon whenever you feel stuck or uninspired. However, it is absolutely crucial to understand the vast and highly important difference between good theft and bad theft. Bad theft is simply plagiarism, which is taking someone else's hard work and passing it off as your own without adding any value, insight, or transformation. Good theft, on the other hand, is an act of deep reverence and intense study. When you steal like an artist, you do not just skim the surface; you dive deep into the underlying mechanics of the work you admire. You try to understand the thought process of the original creator, the historical context in which they were working, and the specific problems they were actively trying to solve. You take their idea, merge it with your own experiences, and filter it through your unique personality until it becomes something entirely new. Good theft honors the original creator by building upon their solid foundation, while bad theft simply diminishes both the thief and the victim. Consider the legendary rock band The Beatles, who are often hailed as the absolute pinnacle of musical originality. Before they were writing groundbreaking, genre-defining albums, they were just a group of teenagers playing endless covers of early American rock and roll songs in the smoky clubs of Hamburg, Germany. They spent thousands of hours meticulously copying the styles of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Buddy Holly. They stole chord progressions, vocal inflections, and stage movements. But because they were four distinct individuals from Liverpool, they could never perfectly replicate the exact sound of their American idols. Their failure to be perfect copies resulted in a slightly different sound, and as they continued to write and play, that gap between their influences and their own abilities became the glorious, unmistakable sound of The Beatles. Their brilliant originality was born directly out of their intense, dedicated imitation. This exact same principle applies seamlessly to writers, entrepreneurs, designers, and scientists. If you want to write a great novel, you must first read hundreds of great novels and carefully study how they are constructed. If you want to build a highly successful business, you must analyze the strategies of the companies you admire and figure out how to adapt their best practices to your specific market. You have to surround yourself with greatness if you ever hope to produce greatness yourself. The old saying goes that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, but in the creative world, you are the average of the art you actively consume, the books you read, and the ideas you immerse yourself in. By consciously choosing your influences and relentlessly collecting good ideas, you are actively shaping the creative mind you desperately want to have. Ultimately, the heavy burden of absolute originality is a ghost that haunts only those who do not understand how creativity actually functions in the real world. The greatest innovators in history were all master thieves, eagerly borrowing the best ideas of their predecessors and combining them in novel, exciting ways. When you finally let go of the ego-driven need to be completely unique, you open yourself up to a world of endless possibility. You stop worrying about whether your ideas are purely yours, and you start focusing on whether they are useful, beautiful, and true. Embracing influence is not a sign of weakness; it is a profound demonstration of creative maturity. It clearly shows that you respect the vast lineage of human achievement and that you are perfectly willing to do the hard, necessary work of standing on the shoulders of giants to see just a little bit further into the future.