Austin Kleon

Getting things done

It’s a new year, so naturally people are regretting all the things they didn’t get done last year, and thinking about all the things they want to get done this year.

A friend of mine messaged me this week and asked me what I think about bullet journaling, and I, ever the helpful friend, said, “I don’t think about bullet journaling.”

Another friend sent me this article making a case for using a paper planner.

I’ve gotten a handful of tweets recently asking me about “productivity systems,” which is funny to me because it assumes I do any thinking at all about productivity. Productivity is pretty low on my list of cares. “Productivity is for machines, not for people,” Jason Fried recently tweeted. “Think about how effective you’re being, not how productive you’re being.”

Some people tell me they have all these great ideas, and they just can’t get it together enough to make them happen. I am envious of these people, because I do not feel full of great ideas. I have plenty of faith in my ability to do something with a great idea, should I have one, but what I do not have is any faith in my ability to actually generate that great idea. I spend almost all of my time trying to have an idea worth doing something about. 

Anyways. The best thing I’ve read about productivity is still David Allen’s classic, Getting Things Done. It’s way more Zen than its cover might suggest, and it’s full of little nuggets like, “If it’s on your mind, your mind isn’t clear,” and “Get the ideas out of your head so you can do something with them.” Allen’s advice, as far as a system goes, is: “All you really need is lists and folders.” You need a list of stuff you want to do, and you need a place to put things so you can get to them later. Nothing fancy. I make do with a Google Calendar, Dropbox, a couple of to-do list pages in the back of my notebook, a filing cabinet, and banker’s boxes.

Really, the best way I know to see something through is to get yourself a calendar, put an X in the day’s box after you do your work, and don’t break the chain.

And maybe stop worrying so much about productivity and getting things done. Worry about things worth doing.

You receive what you’re ready to receive

A thought from Thoreau’s journal, on this day, January 4th, 1860:

A man receives only what he is ready to receive…. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know. If there is something which does not concern me, which is out of my line, which by experience or by genius my attention is not drawn to, however novel and remarkable it may be, if it is spoken we hear it not, if it is written, we read it not, or if we read it, it does not detain us. Every man thus tracks himself  through life, in all his hearing and reading and observation and traveling. His observations make a chain. The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest which he has observed, he does not observe. By and by we may be ready to receive what we cannot receive now.

Receiving, here, means a taking in, or a welcoming, as you’d receive a visitor. This is, to my mind, a good argument for self-directed learning, for following one’s nose, so to speak, as we take in best what we want to take in. (Although almost anyone who’s been taught has been haunted by the words of their teachers, which often only make sense in time.) People learn best what and when they want to learn. The first step to thinking, according to my friend Alan, is to want to think in the first place.

Reading, for example: We must be ready to take in a book. I am fond of the saying “It wasn’t for me” to describe a book I didn’t connect with, because it allows that given enough time, it may be for me, and I may be ready to receive it. We are always changing, so we will find new things to receive when re-reading. Thoreau follows up with a specific example, about Aristotle and fishes:

I find (e.g.) in Aristotle something about the spawning of the pout & perch — because I know something about it already & have my attention aroused — but I do not discover till very late that he has made other equally important observations on the spawning of other fishes, because I am not interested in those fishes.

Reading is a part of our education, and education is a drawing out of who we are and what we care about. We meet ourselves in the words of others.

Earlier in his journal, Thoreau is observing the snow, and how the presence of tracks reveals formally undetected animals. So he already has tracking on the mind, and turns the idea on himself: He’s tracking himself in his journal, in his reading, in his observing. (As A.K.R. said, “Pay attention to what you pay attention to.”) Part of his work is examining his own chain, adding links, identifying the weak ones, fortifying others…

100 things that made my year (2017)

Suggested accompaniment: my 2017 playlist on shuffle play

  1. Taking a walk every morning because the demons hate fresh air.
  2. Driving the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco.
  3. Going back to Italy. Walking around Milan and Turin to Cannonball Adderly’s Somethin’ Else.
  4. Antigua, Guatemala.
  5. Austin’s new central library. Walking there from my house through the greenbelt.
  6. Watching the solar eclipse in the courtyard of the Art Institute of Chicago.
  7. Lake Michigan in the summer. The lookout at Arcadia. Sleeping Bear Dunes. The S.S. Badger.
  8. Keeping a good old-fashioned diary. Holding my tongue and loosening my pen. Having a good place to have bad ideas. Taping guardian spirits inside the front cover. Re-reading.
  9. Reading diaries. Thoreau, daily. Kafka. Kaethe Kollwitz. Andy Warhol. David Sedaris.
  10. DJing a one-hour set for KUTX.
  11. Getting more and more into to classical music. Taking my son to free concerts around town. Playing Schumann and Bach on piano. Listening to KMFA. Max Richter’s recomposed Four Seasons. Michael Torke’s saxophone quartet, “July.” Jan Swafford’s Language of the Spirit. Stories about Beethoven. Drawing comics about Brahms.
  12. Looking at the moon. Knowing what moon phase it is based on how shitty I feel. Using Sky Guide to find constellations. 100 Aspects of the Moon. The lunar Rashomon collage chapter in Lincoln In The Bardo. Mary Ruefle’s essay on poets and the moon in Madness, Rack, and Honey.
  13. Thinking about seasons.
  14. Glueing one thing to another. Finding the simplest cut.
  15. Hannah Höch.
  16. Lance Letscher.
  17. Being lazy. Taking naps. Lin Yutang’s The Importance of Living. Jenny Odell’s “How To Do Nothing.” Robert Louis Stevenson’s An Apology for Idlers. The song “Hallelujah, I’m A Bum!” Raymond Carver’s “Loafing.” Manifesto of the idle parent.
  18. Buying a huge 4K TV at Costco for the bedroom and watching too much television. Binge-watching The Good Place, Halt and Catch Fire, Detectorists, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Catastrophe, and Grand Designs. Watching bad cable movies on the Roku channel.
  19. Killing whole afternoons with 17776 and Universal Paperclips.
  20. Going to Clark’s on a date with my wife and ordering affogato and then watching every other couple copy us.
  21. Common Sense Media.
  22. Listening to good podcast miniseries while working out, like Jon Ronson’s The Butterfly Effect and Damon Krukowski’s Ways of Hearing.
  23. The digitized Corita Kent archives. Getting her GO SLO poster for Christmas.
  24. Accepting that nobody knows what’s gonna happen and working without hope and without despair.
  25. Chuck Berry (RIP) reciting Theodore Tilton’s poem, “Even This Shall Pass Away.”
  26. Not waking up to the news. Not arguing with strangers on the internet. Staying out of the shitstream. Logging off. Not paying for wi-fi. (“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes — including you.”)
  27. Bill Withers on why he walked away the music business.
  28. Library extension.
  29. My paper dictionary.
  30. An “organ donor” in our neighborhood giving us an old Hammond for the music room.
  31. A neighbor giving my wife a whole case of ginger beer and drinking Moscow Mules all summer.
  32. Saying I could read 10,000 words on Raffi, then finding Sheila Heti’s profile. Listening to “Bananaphone” on repeat until slaphappy.
  33. Perfume Genius’s “Queen” and No Shape.
  34. Walt Whitman.
  35. Lao Tzu.
  36. X’s More Fun In The New World.
  37. Gang of Four, Solid Gold.
  38. Buying a Rolodex at Goodwill for $2.
  39. Warren Craghead’s Trump drawings.
  40. Nathaniel Russell’s fake fliers.
  41. Old George Carlin specials. Jammin’ in New York.
  42. Stefan Zweig’s biography of Montaigne.
  43. Doing something that will outlast them.
  44. Eating perfect chicken fingers on the beach in Grand Cayman.
  45. $7 Tex-Mex lunch specials. City Of Gold. Molly Savage’s Costco food court painting. “The Case for Bad Coffee” and “In Praise of Ugly Food” from Best Food Writing 2016. Stories about Olive Garden.
  46. Valentina’s Tex-Mex BBQ.
  47. Sitting in a booth at Jim’s on 71.
  48. The new Reese’s peanut butter cups with Reese’s Pieces in them.
  49. Cup of Calm tea.
  50. Eating clam chowder at the Legal Seafood bar in the Philadelphia airport.
  51. Hong Ting’s “The Fisherman’s Song at Dusk.”
  52. Denis Johnson (RIP) on homeschooling his kids.
  53. My friend Laura, saying, “Take it year by year, kid by kid.”
  54. Learning how to learn again. Making lists of what I want to learn. Studying something you love in depth.
  55. Art with the kids. Drawing skeletons. Orchestrated drawings. Raising surrealists.
  56. Getting permission from Nina Katchadourian’s show Curiouser at the Blanton.
  57. Soul music. Sam & Dave’s “Soothe Me.” The Impressions’ “Keep On Pushin’.” D’Angelo’s Black Messiah. Sly & The Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On. Al Green doing “Here I Am” on Soul Train. Sam and Dave on German TV in 1967. James Gadson’s drumming for Bill Withers.
  58. Bill Knott’s short poems. (And bonus poems.)
  59. Jackie Shane’s motto, explained during her monologue on “Money,” on Any Other Way: “Do what you want, but know what you’re doing.”
  60. Discovering Walter Murch and In The Blink of an Eye.
  61. Watching old Val Lewton horror movies on Filmstruck.
  62. Blogging every day since October 1st.
  63. Paper.
  64. Laura Walls’ biography of Thoreau.
  65. Getting a new stereo and CD player. Discovering how amazing CDs sound after streaming for so many years.
  66. Going to End of An Ear with my son and buying him Kraftwerk and LCD Soundsystem CDs.
  67. David Rakoff’s Half Empty and his rant about Rent.
  68. Tidying up here and there, but also embracing mess.
  69. Slowing down.
  70. The harp of Mary Lattimore. (And her Instagram.)
  71. Listening to Carly Rae Jepsen really loud in the car. (Emotion and “Cut To The Feeling.”)
  72. Books about exploring. Thoreau, again. John Stilgoe’s Outside Lies Magic. Keri Smith’s The Wander Society. Solnit’s A Field Guide To Getting Lost.
  73. Apocalyptic songs. William Onyeabor’s “Atomic Bomb.” (RIP.) Sonny and The Sunsets’ “Dark Corners.” Tubeway Army’s “Are Friends Electric?” Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting.”
  74. Watching movies in the theater. Blade Runner 2049. Paterson. The Last Jedi. Baby Driver. Singin’ in the Rain.
  75. Watching movies in bed. Get Out. The Handmaiden. The Lobster. Time Bandits. The Thin Man. My Man Godfrey. In Order of Disappearance. The Limey. Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Christmas in Connecticut.
  76. Re-watching old favorites. Moonstruck. Lebowski. Only Lovers Left Alive. The Apartment. Heat. Groundhog Day. It Happened One Night. Young Frankenstein. Coming To America. When Harry Met Sally. Magic Mike XXL. Royal Tenenbaums. Creed. John Wick!
  77. Starting a fight club with my recycle bin.
  78. Seeing coyotes and roadrunners on our morning walks. The legend of Steve.
  79. The pilot at the Atlanta airport who went out of his way to show me an art installation.
  80. Not telling people how it’s done. John Cage’s parable about not teaching.
  81. Edna St. Vincent Millay reading “Recuerdo.”
  82. James Patterson blurbing himself.
  83. How Esther Pearl Watson paints her characters nude before adding clothes.
  84. Tana Hoban’s books about signs and symbols.
  85. Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s “You May Want To Marry My Husband.” (RIP) Her daughter Paris’s Instagram. Paying attention to what you pay attention to.
  86. Seeing friends during SXSW and the Texas Book Festival.
  87. Drawing comics on the iPad Pro.
  88. Getting to read great books before they’re released. Alan Jacob’s How To Think. Tim Kreider’s I Wrote This Book Because I Love You.
  89. Having a weekly library routine. Going to Miss Monica’s story times at the Hampton Branch at Oak Hill with the kids and hitting P. Terry’s after.
  90. All the funny things my oldest son said. “Your skin keeps your bones from getting dirty!” At the pool: “She wouldn’t talk to me… She must not have any teeth!” At the playground, a kid told him that Jesus was dead, and he said, “So is Beethoven!” Playing him Ray Charles: “Papa, This is making me dance!” Referring to bowling as “pinball.” Seeing our monogrammed towels: “K is for Kraftwerk!” The time he called Leonard Bernstein “Bernie Einstein.” Shouting in frustration, “Who in the world made this stupid screwdriver?? It says ‘Made In China’ but it doesn’t say who made it!!!” The time he walked in on me watching Blade Runner, and he saw Deckard eating with chopsticks, and he said, “That guy is KNITTING HIS NOODLES!” Seeing snow: “I like how snow looks in real life!” The time I told him I thought he’d like marionettes, and he said, “Does she know a lot about bones?”
  91. My two-year-old conducting Beethoven.
  92. Silence. Sleeping with an eye mask and ear plugs.
  93. Teaching myself, finally, to solder. Soldering broken toy electronics back together.
  94. Recording songs on my old Tascam 4-track with my five-year-old, with titles like “Skeleton Girlfriend” and “I Don’t Want To Be Dead (Like Beethoven Is Dead)”
  95. An epic 30-minute UNO game with my wife.
  96. Drinking champagne on ice in a pint glass.
  97. A bowl of cereal when you can’t sleep.
  98. Getting up in the night to take a pee and looking out the bathroom window at the moonlit backyard.
  99. Giving it five minutes. Changing my mind.
  100. Reading books.

Previous years here.

Recent posts

Follow me elsewhere

This site participates in the Amazon Affiliates program, the proceeds of which keep it free for anyone to read.