42 | Input + 🧠 → Output

When you create, breathing in is as important as breathing out.

Hey friends,

I came across this idea while reading ‘Hell Yeah or no’ by Derek Sivers last week:

The word “inspiration” usually means “something that mentally stimulates you.”

But “inspiration” also means to breathe in.

I was surprised because I had never thought of it that way. We spend so much time consuming without a direct purpose.

Some people are into productivity porn and will spend hours reading books, watching inspirational videos, trying out the fancy new tools…

Some others will learn a language because it’s cool to do it (it really is), hearing words without ever speaking any. The same goes with music, reading/writing, web development, entrepreneurship, and pretty much any other field. We like to feel inspired. But how often do we act on this inspiration?

Breathe in…

Getting inspired is important, just as breathing in is.

Hearing other people’s ideas, seeing the beauty in the outside world, reading up on your favorite authors/creators… all of that constitutes your oxygen. It will only make your passion, your inner fire burn brighter and stronger. You need it.

"What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original."
— Austin Kleon, in Steal like an Artist

If you intend to be a good leader, a good creator, you must let go of your ego, of your idea that you can create anything out of nothing. All that is said today has been said before, only in different ways. Don’t be afraid to steal like an artist.

If you don’t breathe in regularly, you will just exhaust your fire, and creatively die.

… and breath out…

Breathing out is just as important as breathing in, yet we often overlook it.

Creating is the way in which we learn most effectively. When you create, you apply concepts and ideas that you have seen and you give them your own flavor. Because creating is rarely straightforward, in this process of trials and errors, you will figure out what you need and get rid of the rest.

“It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique." — Conan O'brien

In this sense, whatever your goals are, creating is the ultimate companion to learning effectively.

By taking the matter in your hand and trying to “make something of it”, you reinforce the new ideas in your head as well as throw out all the unnecessary. In the real world, here are some shapes this could take:

• Explaining the main ideas from a book you have read to a friend or in a blog post. Not reciting or plagiarizing, but explaining in your own terms, through your own understanding.

• Writing a song, a little text, or a long-form message using the pretérito perfecto that you just learned in Spanish. Whether just for you or publicly.

• Replicating a website you like based on the new skills in HTML, CSS, and Javascript that you just learned.

• Trying out new marketing or business strategies you just heard/read about for your own business.

• Follow the way of writing of an author you really like…

You can only realize how much you really learned once you have tried to create something with it.

Inevitably, if you don’t breathe out regularly enough, you will never make room for oxygen to come in and your fire will die.

… then iterate again.

Lastly, just like in real life, this is an iterative process; you can’t do it once and be done with it. Instead, build the habit of learning and creating at regular/fast intervals.

Creating as soon as you learn something allows you to get feedback and improve just as fast what and how you learn.

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— What I loved this week

Here's what I've been loving this week:

📱 One tool I'm loving: Figma, an amazing collaborative and web-based design tool for creators. I use it almost every day, whether to design personal projects or to do a little “montages” for my blog or projects that I would usually rely on Photoshop or Canva for. Really nice tool and amazingly conceived.

📖 Book recommendation: I’m currently diving into Hyperfocus by Chris Baily. As you might expect from the title, the author dives into ways to reclaim your attention in a world filled with distractions. I’ll keep you updated as I will get more insights from it.

🗣 Quote of the week: "If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try."
— Seth Godin (in The Dip)

✏️ Content, books, and videos I learned from this week:

• 🎥 Perfectionism is destroying your productivity. | by Thomas Frank

• 📰 Life is a game. This is your strategy guide | by Olivier Emberton

• 📘  You don’t know JS #1: Get Started | by Kyle Simpson

• 🎶  Racines | by Kali (a song from my island that I’m nostalgic about)

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— What I created this week

Here is what I created for you lately.

📘 Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon

In a world where Leonardo Da Vinci lived, how could we ever expect to be good at painting, to reach his level? Well, there is one answer to that question and it’s quite straightforward: by stealing. In this post, I dive into the main lessons I learned from reading Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon.

🖥 I joined the #100DaysOfCode challenge!

After having caught up with my various projects during the winter break, I decided to commit publicly to code for at least an hour/day during the next 99 days. My main focus will be on improving my understanding of Javascript, its library React, as well as improve my layout skills with CSS.

If you want to follow my adventures, I will publicly share my progress on Twitter, as well as keep a log on GitHub (where you can also see all of the projects I’m working on).

See you next week 👋🏾