Austin Kleon

It's hard to tell what's work.

It's hard to tell what's play.

Play is the work in a lot of ways.

And it's very easy.

You know, you mentioned the analog desk.

I have a digital desk, which is what we're sitting at right now.

It looks like everybody else's desk.

But right over there, perpendicular to the desk, is the analog desk.

And nothing electronic or digital is allowed over there.

So it's all like paints and pens and stuff you can get at the art store or the school supply aisle at the HEB, you know, grocery, whatever.

And the most important part of my work is to make sure that I don't sit at this desk first, right?

Is to go over to that desk first and have nothing and to see what comes.

I might get something, I might not.

Then I can turn to this desk and do something with it.

You know, so the desk is kind of my, if you want to talk about in corporate terms, that's my R&D time.

Well, the one thing I will say is it's a lot of people, I think a lot of people have great ideas all the time.

And I think they have a lot of stuff going through their heads.

The one thing they don't give themselves is the time, the space, and materials to sit down and not have any distractions and not have anything on their calendar and don't really even have anything they have to produce.

And to sit there with...

could be a pen and paper, could be a guitar and a tape recorder, and see what they can make out of that stew that we all have in our head because everybody now takes in stuff.