I have a series of books, podcasts, and articles that have completely transformed the way I show up as a teacher and how I look at, and make, my art. They have helped me stick through my current dry spell of applications, helped me upgrade my teaching to help students show up and get results, and changed the way I live outside of my art and teaching, too.

Today, I can’t wait to share them with you.

Hey there! 👋 I’m Carrie. Here on Artist Strong, I help self-taught artists with home studios who feel stuck with their art move from wondering what’s next to confidently expressing themselves through unique, original art. To date, thousands have joined the community.

👉🏽👉🏽👉🏽 If you feel like gaps in your learning hold you back from making your best art, sign up and watch my workshop, “How to Create Art from Your Imagination.” It’s completely free, and the link is in the description below.

Something I love about you, the amazing human watching this is that you are a lifelong learner.

That is a phrase I hear over and over again when I hop on calls with you (this past week it was John – hi, John!) is how you love learning, you’re curious to learn the how and why, and strive to do more with your art.

I have three categories of resources I’ll share with you today, and only one category directly relates to the arts. And yet, I’ll explain in a minute, some of these books have totally changed my approach to and confidence in my art.

Habits and Productivity

We are going to start first with the research on habits and productivity. Stick with me now, I hear my creative rebels starting to glaze over.

Here’s what you need to know: a lot of the anecdotal advice we receive about productivity and habits is wrong.

That’s why this was so mind blowing to me, and has truly helped my perfectionism.

Peak by Anders Ericsson

The first book that changed the way I think about art and life is the book Peak by Anders Ericsson. His decades of research into acquiring skill and developing expertise helped me see how much our culture values the idea of talent, and just how much that value gets in the way of our learning.

He found 5 ingredients used by the best in their fields to improve their skill and become the best of the best. And this not only works for people striving for Olympic sport, but absolutely serves the hobbyist striving to do more with their practice, whether it’s golfing, singing, or drawing.

I sincerely believed art was a talent when I was younger and thought I would be stuck with a limited skill level the rest of my life. I’m here today, with so much more skill, wishing I could rush back to my teenage self to describe HOW to practice to build my skill.

I find this information so transformative I changed my program Self-Taught to Self-Confident to use these strategies and practice in a way that helps my students see big strides in their work.

And if that sounds exciting to you, let’s talk about it. Hop on a call with me to discuss where you are with your art, how you practice, and where you want to be so we can figure out what’s next for you and your art.

I personally know how to practice so any time I pick up a new medium I know what to think about, and how to approach my practice to build my skill and seek efficient strides in my growth.

I’ll be sure to link the book and a great podcast interview with Ericsson below.

The Ivy Lee Method

I always was a geek for productivity and seeing people with all kinds of cute calendars, planners, and stickers makes my inner child giddy. But I stopped searching for those things, and using any of them after I discovered The Ivy Lee Method in an article on James Clear’s blog.

The Ivy Lee Method is a super simple strategy for productivity. I started using it the day I read the article and I’ve never stopped. It’s not hard to use or implement and it’s simple to set up.

Every day at the end of the day you list 6 tasks you want to accomplish tomorrow, in order of priority. Then, when you wake up and start your day, you execute on those tasks in that very order. When it’s the end of day again and you’re ready to make a new list of 6, anything you didn’t finish goes in the first tasks of the next day. 

Repeat ad infinitum.

The ONLY thing I have added to this process over the years is to create a weekly list of to-dos that help remind me of my tasks and priorities to keep me focused as I write down those 6 must-dos.

Most days. Art is one of my 6. It’s a clear message to myself and others that art deserves time in my day and that it is important. And it reminds me to build my time and schedule around that important priority, while also acknowledging that I am also a teacher and now primary caregiver to my daughter.

I’m also more efficient in my use of time because I don’t waste any available time wondering about what I should be doing or working on. I have my 6. This definitely opens up more time for my art.

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Once The Ivy lee Method became such an easy tool to use and gave me such immediate success, I had to see what this James Clear fellow was all about. I discovered his book Atomic Habits and let’s just say it doesn’t disappoint.

The BIGGEST lesson I got from his book is something I feature in my video called How a daily art-making minimum has changed my life. 

I’ve always held the belief that when we set goals they should be big, huge ambitious things and that when I say I’m going to make art everyday, well that means hours upon hours. I mean, how is it really even much of a commitment if I don’t go big? 

I never reflected on how when I set those big goals, the first time I don’t meet them I feel like I’ve failed. And it’s pretty crappy. Even if my goal was to paint two hours a day and I did 1 hour 45 minutes, I still failed. 

Instead of celebrating just how much I’m showing up, I’m feeling bad, which does little to motivate me the next day I need to show up for my art.

That’s where Atomic Habits come in. It’s about building habits through small daily actions that bring us closer to the behavior we want. (The idea is literally baked into the title). I commit to a daily minimum and make way more art than I would have otherwise. Especially now as a primary caregiver, with limited time in my day that I can spend on me.

If I held to my previous beliefs and behavior, I would be experiencing a huge break from my artist practice, feel really disconnected from myself, and would struggle returning to my art (something I face anytime I take a break from making).

If there is one book that could change your life, it’s this one.

Mindset

This next section of resources is all about our mindset, which we can all be working on. I never understood to what extent my beliefs dictate my actions until Peak  showed me how much I held back because I believed I could never improve my art skill.

This opened the door to wanting to learn as much as I can about psychology and general mindset to improve my art and life.

I Will Teach You to Be Rich Podcast with Ramit Sethi

Now this one could almost be in a category of its own. Let’s be honest here, us artists tend to have a scarcity mindset, and I’m not just talking about the money we earn. Ramit Sethi is so good at teaching you how to build wealth, but also constantly asks you. “What is a rich life FOR YOU?” 

I love this idea so much, because our lives are individual and different and no one is going to be able to lay out a perfect strategy for earning, investing and spending money in my life better than me. You may love a daily chai, like I do, or you may want to make a yearly art retreat part of your rich life. He forces us to do the reflection work of what we actually want and then look at our finances to see how well our spending behavior reflects those values.

He coaches couples on his podcast, and has additional content that isn’t only for couples on his YouTube channel, which I’ve linked here. 

As artists, we can obsess over the cost of materials, application fees, shipping art, not to mention investing in arts programming that can help us improve our practice. That also doesn’t even speak to the whole culture of “selling out” that people complain about when artists actually take steps to thrive financially and somehow that diminishes their work. We have a lot of work to do, and there is room for all of us to grow and thrive. 

If you’re up for a somewhat honest look at how the choices you make align with the values you espouse (and what to do about it if it doesn’t), you may enjoy Ramit Sethi’s work (and sense of humor) as much as I do.

The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler

For the first time in my life as a recovering perfectionist, I was given permission to accept that (1) it’s likely I will never stop having perfectionist tendencies and (2) that in fact there are adaptive behaviors, meaning some that can actually improve the quality of my life, that are perfectionist.

As an adult, I’ve always heard messaging that described being a perfectionist as entirely maladaptive, meaning that it brought dysfunctional thinking and behaviors into my life. It felt like something I had to fix, and of course if I couldn’t, something is wrong with me (a meta- perfectionist- mindset).

When I read Schafler’s book, I think I almost cried with relief. She talks about both adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism and how to use the adaptive qualities to our advantage. 

As an artist, I have seen firsthand how I can use my strengths to help me show up and keep striving to make my art despite a slew of rejections the past few years. It’s also helped me believe that stretching myself to reach goals is something I can do and achieve and that my perfectionism can actually help me get there.

It’s been a minute since I read this one and feel like it’s time to pick it up again. Learn more here.

The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal

This was a book I didn’t even know I needed. And it’s so powerful in its implication for artists I created an entire video about it, which I’ve linked here and below.

Willpower tends to be a trait I associated with character, perhaps something innate. (Much in the way people talk about talent, actually). This book unlocked the science behind willpower and how you can grow your willpower and exercise it like a muscle.

We all get tired and lose willpower. There are periods of the day when we often have more. And if we know these things, we can use it to our advantage instead of beating ourselves up when we don’t exert picture perfect willpower.

The biggest obstacle that creatives often tell me they face is making time for their art. And when they don’t they feel guilty and beat up on themselves because if they want it, they would just make time for it. But that doesn’t account for the science of willpower, and is really unkind, unreasonable expectations we hold of ourselves. 

I felt this huge sense of relief when I realized I didn’t fully understand how willpower works and what I can do to improve it so I can show up more for my art, exercise, you name it.

Learn more here.

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

While the act of making art can be rather solitary, sharing it is anything but. This idea of sharing our art, or god forbid promoting it, can feel daunting (remember our conversation about being a sell-out?).

Enter Priya Parker, whose gem of a book felt like a breath of fresh air. She talks about different kinds of gatherings and how we can consciously create the experience we want in any gathering, whether it’s a wedding, a BBQ or a small group game night.

I immediately saw this application for online learning, in person learning, and how we show up and share our art. Instead of doing what everyone does, or being reactive and haphazard about how we show up and teach or share our art, what if we started thinking about the values we hold, the kind of experience we want people to have and then get curious about how we can build a gathering that honors that vision.

For anyone who feels bad about promoting their art, this book can help you think about how you invite people into the work and let them be in community around your art. The whole book feels like a big, wholehearted invitation to connection. And really, if we are honest, isn’t that part of what our art is about?

Art

Our last three books today are specifically about art and the creative process. And while one book may be familiar, most are not the usual ones you see creatives recommend, like Art and Fear or The Artist’s Way. 

Big Magic

The first one I’m happy to recommend is Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. She talks about creative process, not being so attached to outcomes and the product, what it’s like to have your most successful work behind you (and keep going anyway), and so much more.

The permission she gives creatives to keep day jobs, to carve time for their art and to live life is a balm for the creative spirit. She doesn’t sugar coat the experience and says sometimes you have to eat a crap sandwich to get to the good stuff. Are you willing to stick with your art even when it gets hard?

One snippet that I find really valuable is giving your fear or inner critic ground rules. She doesn’t suggest that we should strive to lose our fears but instead give it boundaries. I love this so much because too many perfectionists here believe (do you?) that having fear is a sign of weakness or failure to begin with, which simply isn’t true. Having those feelings makes you, well, human.

If you’re looking for an honest look at the creative process that also grants us the grace of being human, this book is for you. She also has a short podcast series called Magic Lessons I highly recommend.

I have an article that goes into more detail about the book here.

9th Street Women Artists by Mary Gabriel

This is the only art history resource in the lot. Mary Gabriel shares the story of women who helped form The New York School and the Abstract Expressionist movement. While abstract expressionism isn’t my preferred style of art, I so admire these women for breaking social norms, for making hard choices I myself could never make, and trailblazing while being overlooked simply for being women.

For people who say art supplies are expensive, you aren’t thinking creatively enough. When they wanted to work large, these artists scoured shipyards for canvas scrap. 

For people who say you can’t take breaks from your art, these artists had periods where they couldn’t make art, but they always came back to the work.

It also highlights the extent of their sacrifices to make the art they felt called to create.

This book felt like a bible for me, of how different women have shown up for their art and made it work on their own terms. I felt a kinship with these artists. And reading it completely fueled my work.

You can take a peek at the book and learn more below.

The Practice by Seth Godin

“Creativity is a choice, it’s not a bolt of lightning from somewhere else.” 

Seth Godin writes with a big picture understanding of creativity. He explains how creativity shows up in our lives, how our choice to be creative runs counter to systems in our culture and society, and encourages us to keep going.

He suggests that showing up regularly for your work and holding ourselves accountable is a generous act.

I wanted to quote half of the book as I reviewed it for this article. Here’s another: “A good process can lead to good outcomes, but it doesn’t guarantee them.”

And one more: “Perfectionism has nothing to do with being perfect.”

He gives us a formula of hidden truths that have guided as artists whether we are aware of them or not. Seth Godin talks about what it means to be an artist while also focusing on the practice, the process, the commitment we can make to our art.

He is analytical in his approach but speaks to you as if you’re sitting down for coffee together talking about creative process and art.

Learn more about The Practice here.

I LOVE learning. If someone would pay me to get endless degrees I’d do it. Seriously. Thankfully libraries, kindle book deals, and bookstores exist. Not to mention the amazing accessibility of the world wide web.

I’ve linked as many of these resources as I can below. Some are affiliate links, where a small amount at no extra cost to you will support Artist Strong. Thank you for your help.

If you enjoy my work, the way I talk about learning and growing, I highly recommend the resources I’ve shared with you. Of course, we are all different and different books and podcasts may be just the injection of inspiration and action you need. Let’s share the amazing people and resources that help us grow in the comments below.

As always thank you for watching.

Remember: proudly call yourself an artist.

Together we are Artist Strong!