Coaching practices for I Admire a Lot of People's Work and Consume a Ton of it but it Just Washes Over Me and Never Feeds Back Into Anything I Make I've Never Actually Pinned Down What Specifically I Want to Take From Each of Them
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For I Admire a Lot of People's Work and Consume a Ton of it but it Just Washes Over Me and Never Feeds Back Into Anything I Make I've Never Actually Pinned Down What Specifically I Want to Take From Each of Them, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I admire a lot of people’s work and consume a ton of it, but it just washes over me and never feeds back into anything I make
- I look at work I admire and just feel a vague awe, like it’s magic
- I hoard everything until it’s finished and perfect, so I work in total isolation and only ever show the polished result
- My downtime is all screens
- I keep choosing projects based on what I think will impress people or do well, and then I stall out halfway through because deep down they never actually moved me
Practices that may help
- Collect your influences deliberately
Curate the artists, ideas, and work you love — your taste is the raw material you will recombine.
Steal Like an Artist, in Practice - Copy masters to see how they made choices you take for granted
Reproduce an admired work by hand and pay attention to every decision — copying is how beginners see what experts do invisibly.
The Beginner’s Mind in Creative Practice - Share the process, not just the result
Show the work in progress to attract collaborators, feedback, and serendipity.
Steal Like an Artist, in Practice - Fill the well
Deliberately take in sensory, novel experiences so there’s something to draw from.
The Artist’s Way, Made Practical - Follow genuine interest, not strategic interest
Pursue the thing that genuinely excites you — even if you cannot explain why or see how it fits.
The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making - Approach your own work with beginner’s mind
When evaluating your work, try to experience it as a stranger would — without the story of how it was made.
The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making - Diversify creative inputs: consume across domains and outside your taste
Read, watch, listen to work that you do not immediately like — outside-taste input breaks the feedback loop that narrows creative range over time.
The Beginner’s Mind in Creative Practice - Cultivate awareness as your primary creative tool
Pay unusually close attention to what you notice, what you feel, and what catches you — these are the raw material.
The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making - Imitate, then transform
Copy your heroes deliberately as practice — the gap between you and them becomes your style.
Steal Like an Artist, in Practice - Keep side projects and play
Protect a low-stakes project with no goal — the “waste” is where the real ideas surface.
Steal Like an Artist, in Practice
Related concerns
- Steal Like An Artist In Practice At Work
Austin Kleon’s “steal like an artist” reframes creativity as remix, not virgin invention: nothing is wholly original, so the work is to collect great influences and recombine them into something that is yours. It is a practitioner philosophy rather than a tested intervention, but the underlying claim — that creativity is recombination — is well grounded in how ideas actually form.
- Deliberate Copy Creative Practice
Reproduce an admired work by hand and pay attention to every decision — copying is how beginners see what experts do invisibly.
Copy masters to see how they made choices you take for granted
- Outside Taste Creative
Read, watch, listen to work that you do not immediately like — outside-taste input breaks the feedback loop that narrows creative range over time.
Diversify creative inputs: consume across domains and outside your taste
- Steal Like An Artist In Practice For My Teenager
Austin Kleon’s “steal like an artist” reframes creativity as remix, not virgin invention: nothing is wholly original, so the work is to collect great influences and recombine them into something that is yours. It is a practitioner philosophy rather than a tested intervention, but the underlying claim — that creativity is recombination — is well grounded in how ideas actually form.
- The Artist S Way
Julia Cameron’s method treats creative block as something you clear with daily practice rather than wait out: free-writing three pages every morning, taking a weekly solo "artist date," and recovering a sense of play. The tools are practitioner methods refined over decades of teaching — largely anecdotal, though morning pages overlap with expressive-writing research that does have real support.
- The Artist S Way At Work
Show the work in progress to attract collaborators, feedback, and serendipity.
Share the process, not just the result
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