"Within You Lies the Realm of Divinity," declares June 15th text
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In the realm of productivity and creativity, two seminal books have captured the attention of many: Cal Newport's "Deep Work" and Austin Kleon's "Steal Like an Artist". Both books address the themes of creativity and productive work, albeit with distinct emphases and approaches.
Cal Newport’s Deep Work centres on the concept of sustained, distraction-free focus on cognitively demanding tasks. Newport defines deep work as deliberately engaging in intense, purposeful concentration sessions to maximise learning, creativity, and productivity. He advocates structuring work in long, uninterrupted blocks (like 90-minute sessions) to enter a flow state conducive to generating high-quality work and mastering complex skills.
On the other hand, Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist focuses more broadly on creativity as a process of influence, remixing, and openness. Kleon argues that creativity is about borrowing ideas and inspiration from diverse sources, combining and transforming them into something new.
Key Differences in Perspective
| Aspect | Cal Newport’s Deep Work | Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist | |----------------------|---------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------| | Core Concept | Intense, focused work sessions to produce high-quality results and mastery | Creativity as a remixing process shaped by influences and “stealing” ideas creatively | | Approach to Creativity| Creativity emerges through deep concentration and mastery of skills | Creativity flourishes through openness to external influences and playful recombination | | Focus vs. Exploration| Emphasizes minimizing distractions and maximizing uninterrupted focus | Encourages continual exploration and absorption of diverse ideas, even playful copying | | Work Rituals | Structured sessions (e.g., 90-minute sprints, routines to enter flow) | Looser, more free-form, embraces imperfection and iteration without pressure | | Goal | Achieve tangible, high-impact productivity and skill development | Generate original creative output by transforming existing ideas into personal art |
Newport's book offers a rigorous framework to harness focus as a tool to unlock deep creativity and productivity, while Kleon's presents creativity as inherently collaborative, iterative, and inspired by "stealing" from the world around you. Newport's book is about developing a disciplined cognitive environment for output, whereas Kleon's is about mindset and creative influence.
Notably, J.K. Rowling is one of the four female examples in "Deep Work". She voluntarily isolated herself to work in depth on the last book of the Harry Potter series due to numerous distractions and solicitations at home. This practice was not a luxury or a whim, but a real cognitive need to finish a work as dense and emotionally complex as the last Harry Potter book.
Meanwhile, "Steal Like an Artist" offers 10 principles to help discover one's artistic side and build a more creative life. Among the principles that particularly resonate are: do good work and share it, use constraints to your advantage, a stable life makes creation freer, and our secondary passions can become our greatest sources of inspiration.
Céline Alvarez, who reinterpreted Montessori pedagogy in the light of neurosciences, created an unexpected bridge with Cal Newport's approach. She emphasised positive emotion as a learning engine and moved away from a private and elitist application of the method. Alvarez advocates for a global transformation of school, calling for practices aligned with the natural needs of the child.
Maria Montessori, the woman who practiced deep work and developed a method that prepares children's brains for deep work, also sought to transform society through a silent revolution in education. Her deep work approach emphasised meaning and presence rather than just productivity. Deep work, according to Alvarez, can be lived in a fluid, sensitive, and living rhythm-adjusted way.
In sum, both books offer valuable insights into creativity and productivity, but from different angles: one through disciplined focus and cognitive depth, the other through openness to ideas and playful transformation.
Science and personal growth intersect as both Cal Newport's "Deep Work" and Austin Kleon's "Steal Like an Artist" promote learning through distinct, yet complementary, approaches. Newport emphasizes deep, focused work sessions to enhance productivity and master complex skills, while Kleon stresses the importance of absorbing diverse sources of inspiration and transforming them creatively. Education-and-self-development can benefit from these books, as they provide tools for nurturing creativity and improving focus.
