Ignore Everybody

The first thing that surprised me about this book was how short it was. I listened to the unabridged audio version, which just barely topped two hours (and if you took away the part at the beginning and end where they read the title, author and publisher information, it probably came in just a hair under two hours). That’s like listening to one episode of a Tim Ferriss podcast.

It was based of of some blog posts of his and it was all centered around tips for creativity, so I guess that explains the shortness. In truth, it was a pretty good length for what it was.

For those of you who find strong language and sexual content objectionable, I will warn you that at the end of each section there are semi-random comments, many of which are vulgar (and at least one of which was blasphemous if you care about that sort of thing).

I only took about a page and a half of notes on this one, but for a two hour book, that’s actually pretty respectable. Here are my notes:

“You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it is created, neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is.”

“The idea doesn’t have to be big, it just has to be yours.”

Sometimes it’s liberating to be free from ambition for a change and to just create something for the joy of it. Ironically, things created during this time tend to have great commercial potential

“Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina.”

There is always a tension between needing to do something to earn a living and having sovereignty over your creativity. He calls this the Sex and Cash Theory (which sort of sounds like it has something to do with prostitution, but I promise it’s about creativity). The idea is that sometimes you have to do the lucrative project you don’t care about and sometimes you need to skip the lucrative project so that you are free to do the “sexy” option.

“Part of being an artist is learning how to sing in nobody’s voice but your own.”

“The best way to get approval is not to need it.”

Reamain frugal. The less you can live off of, the more likely your idea is to succeed. This is true even after you’ve “made it.”

“Sometimes ‘boring” can be a lot of fun –especially it it’s on your own terms.

The size of the endeavor doesn’t matter as much as how meaningful it is to you.

I listened to the audiobook on this one, but I’m sure it’s solid in print too. This is a nice little book if you want a quick read (like if you’ve set a goal for how many books you want to read in a year and are behind in December…)