Rick Rubin’s ‘The Creative Act’

One of my most fascinating discoveries from last year is Rick Rubin’s book “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”. In a world obsessed with productivity and productivity hacks, this book is breathtakingly audacious as it deconstructs creativity instead - how we humans ‘truly create something new’ by manifesting an impulse, a thought or an idea into being.

It is delightfully simple in narrative and structure, but best savored slowly. Especially as the wisdom comes from Rick Rubin’s experience of having helped the greatest artistes from diverse musical genres - Johnny Cash to Adele to Slayer to Kanye to Metallica to Tom Petty - create some of their coolest work.

The most beautiful part of his guidance is its universality. I could use the methods to build strategy, to relook at some parts of my business. A designer used it to create a whole new way of playing with positive and negative spaces. I read some parts of it to a programmer friend, and he said that some of his most elegant code has been written when he has worked in similar ways.

Perhaps that is why the title hints at a “A Way of Being”.

Read it, not only for its use but also for the experience of reading something that goes deep into the most unique thing humans can do - Create.