Explore Versus Exploit in Creative Work

Hey friends, Chase here

Austin Kleon is back on the show, and this conversation is exactly the kind of reminder every creative person needs.

You probably know Austin from Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going, the books that have helped millions of people rethink creativity, sharing, influence, originality, and what it actually means to make things in public.

But Austin's new book, Don't Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again, goes somewhere even more fundamental.

It asks a question that feels especially urgent for creators, entrepreneurs, artists, writers, photographers, parents, and anyone trying to make meaningful work in a world that wants to turn everything into content:

What if the way back to your best creative work is not becoming more serious, but becoming more playful?

That question matters because most of us have made creativity too heavy. We have wrapped it in identity, pressure, productivity, platforms, metrics, perfectionism, and the fear of being judged. We get stuck asking whether we are real artists, serious writers, successful creators, or legitimate professionals. We worry about the noun before we do the verb.

Austin's message is simpler, deeper, and more freeing:

"Don't call it art. Don't worry about being an artist. Forget the nouns. Do the verbs. Just make stuff."

That idea is the center of this episode. We talk about what kids can teach us about creativity, why play is not frivolous, how to build the conditions for your best work, why attention is your most valuable resource, and why some of the most important ideas in your life might come from goofing off.

This conversation is about loosening the grip. It is about getting back to the part of you that makes before it judges, explores before it explains, and follows the energy before it knows exactly where the work is going.

Why This Conversation Matters Right Now

We are living in a strange moment for creative people. On one hand, there has never been more opportunity. An individual with a laptop, a camera, a newsletter, a sketchbook, a phone, a point of view, or a weird little idea can reach people directly.

That is extraordinary.

But it also comes with a cost. The pressure to turn every interest into a brand, every hobby into content, every project into a product, and every creative impulse into a strategy has never been stronger.

We are constantly being asked to define ourselves:

• What do you do?
• What is your niche?
• What is your platform?
• What are you building?
• How are you monetizing it?
• What is the plan?

Those questions can be useful at the right time. But when they show up too early, they can suffocate the very thing they are trying to organize.

Austin's work reminds us that creativity begins before identity. Before "artist." Before "writer." Before "photographer." Before "entrepreneur." Before "content creator." Before the nouns, there are verbs.

Drawing. Writing. Walking. Noticing. Building. Playing. Collecting. Tinkering. Making. Sharing.

Kids understand this instinctively. They do not sit down and ask whether what they are making fits the market. They do not wonder whether they are allowed to call themselves artists. They do not freeze because the thing in front of them might not be good enough.

They simply begin.

And in that beginning, there is a kind of wisdom most adults have forgotten.

What We Explore in This Episode

• Why kids can be some of the best creativity teachers because they make before they judge, label, or perform.
• How to reconnect with the feeling you wanted as a kid, not necessarily the exact childhood you had.
• Why play is not the opposite of serious work, but a form of creative research and development.
• How to create the conditions for creativity through time, space, materials, and permission.
• Why tools should feel more like toys if you want to stay curious and experimental.
• How phones fracture attention and why protecting the edges of your day can change the texture of your life.
• Why hobbies matter and how bikes, music, golf, drawing, and other forms of play can return us to ourselves.
• Why "don't call it art" can be liberating for anyone who feels trapped by labels or legitimacy.
• How to use jealousy, disgust, and frustration as creative information instead of letting them turn into bitterness.
• Why people pay attention when someone truly believes in what they are doing.

The Core Idea: Forget the Nouns. Do the Verbs.

The fastest way to get unstuck is often to stop asking what you are and start paying attention to what you do.

That sounds simple, but it is one of the biggest traps in creative work.

We get obsessed with identity. Am I an artist? Am I a real writer? Am I a serious photographer? Am I a professional? Am I successful enough to call myself this thing? Am I allowed?

That kind of thinking can freeze you before you even start.

Kids do not have that problem. They are not trying to become "artists." They are drawing. They are building. They are making noise. They are inventing stories. They are throwing materials around and seeing what happens.

Austin's point is not that craft does not matter. It is not that ambition does not matter. It is not that we should abandon discipline.

It is that the living center of creativity is action.

The verb comes first.

Make the thing. Move the pencil. Open the notebook. Pick up the guitar. Ride the bike. Take the walk. Make the zine. Shoot the photo. Write the sentence. Start the weird little project that begins with, "Wouldn't it be funny if…"

That is where the energy is.

Play Is Creative R&D

One of the big tensions in this conversation is the voice many of us carry around that says play is not practical.

That voice says:

• You have responsibilities.
• You need to make money.
• You need to be serious.
• You need to have a plan.
• You need to stop messing around.

Austin's response is that play is not the opposite of serious work. Play is often what makes serious work possible.

He talks about play as research and development. Any healthy company needs R&D. It needs space to explore, test, wander, fail, and discover things that cannot be found through pure efficiency.

The same is true for a creative life.

A lot of us start in explore mode. We are curious. We are trying things. We are learning. We are following our taste. We are discovering our voice.

Then, if something works, we shift into exploit mode. We repeat the thing. We build a career around it. We systematize it. We professionalize it. We optimize it.

That can be useful. But if you stay there forever, you eventually run out of juice.

You need space to explore again.

That is what play gives you. It returns you to the part of the process where you are not just producing, but discovering. And in creative work, discovery is everything.

Create the Conditions, Then Get Out of the Way

One of my favorite parts of this conversation is Austin's simple equation:

Play = time + space + materials.

That may sound almost too simple, but it is profound.

When I look back at the most creative seasons of my life, the pattern is obvious. I had uninterrupted time. I had a place to go. I had the right materials around me. I had enough structure to begin and enough freedom to be surprised.

That is what we often give kids when we want them to create. We give them a table, some paper, some markers, a chunk of time, and permission to make a mess.

Then we grow up and deny ourselves the same basic conditions.

We say we are blocked, stuck, confused, or uninspired, but often we have not created an environment where anything could actually emerge. No time. No space. No materials. No quiet. No room to tinker.

The lesson is not complicated, but it is easy to forget:

Set the conditions. Allow the work to happen. Get out of the way.

That is not laziness. That is not indulgence. That is how the good stuff gets a chance to show up.

The Best Ideas Often Come From Goofing Off

I have said this before, and I mean it: so many of the best ideas in my life have come from goofing off.

Not from trying to optimize. Not from grinding. Not from forcing. Not from staring at a blank screen and demanding genius.

They came when I was tinkering. Playing. Walking. Talking with friends. Making something that had no obvious point. Trying something because it felt fun, strange, or impossible to explain.

Austin and I talk about this because it is one of the hardest things for ambitious people to accept. We want the path to be linear. We want effort to equal outcome. We want the best ideas to come from the most serious hours.

But creativity often does not work that way.

The mind needs room. The body needs movement. The soul needs a little nonsense.

Goofing off is not always avoidance. Sometimes it is how the deeper intelligence gets a chance to speak.

Tools Should Be Toys

Austin says something in this episode that every creator should sit with:

Tools should be toys.

That does not mean your tools are unimportant. It means the best tools invite you into a state of play. They make you want to touch them, try them, misuse them, combine them, push them, and see what happens.

A sketchbook can be a toy. A camera can be a toy. A guitar pedal can be a toy. A bicycle can be a toy. A cheap notebook, a box of crayons, a microphone, a drum machine, a kitchen table, a phone in airplane mode, a pile of index cards — all of it can become part of the creative playground.

The danger is when tools become only professional instruments. When every object in your creative life carries the pressure of output, performance, monetization, or proof, it becomes harder to begin.

A toy invites curiosity.

And curiosity is one of the most reliable doors back into making.

Attention Is the Beginning of Everything

Another major theme in this episode is attention.

Austin shares a simple practice: start and end the day without your phone. Not as a moral performance. Not as some extreme digital detox. Just as a way to protect the edges of the day from people and companies that do not care about you, but desperately want your attention.

That hit me hard.

Because attention is not just another resource. In many ways, it is the resource. What you give your attention to shapes your thoughts, your desires, your mood, your relationships, your sense of possibility, and your work.

If the first thing you do every morning is hand your mind to the internet, you are letting someone else set the tone for your day.

Austin's practice is simple. Coffee. Breakfast. Journal. Kids. Life. Then the phone.

At night, the phone charges in the kitchen.

Small boundary. Huge impact.

Creativity requires attention. And attention has to be protected.

Return to Who You Were Before All This

There is a beautiful thread in this conversation about returning to the things that made you feel alive before life got complicated.

For Austin, that includes riding a bike and playing in a band. For me, golf has become one of those things. Not because it is productive in the traditional sense, but because it gets me outside, off my phone, walking with friends, and fully present for hours.

That matters.

A lot of people feel lost because they are trying to think their way back into aliveness. But sometimes the way back is physical. Pick up the instrument. Ride the bike. Throw the baseball. Walk the dog. Draw badly. Make noise. Get outside. Do the thing you used to love before you thought it had to mean something.

Austin brings up the question:

Who were you before all this?

Before the career. Before the metrics. Before the audience. Before the obligations. Before the identity got heavy.

There may be clues there.

Not because you need to go backward, but because some part of you may have been waiting to be invited forward again.

Don't Call It Art

The title of Austin's book is not a dismissal of art. It is a liberation from the weight we put on the word.

For a lot of people, "art" has become intimidating. Sacred. Serious. Something that belongs to museums, geniuses, experts, critics, galleries, and people who have permission.

But making is older and deeper than all of that.

Kids understand this. They do not call it art. They just do things.

And when we stop obsessing over whether something is art, we create more room to actually make. We get less precious. Less frozen. Less performative. Less worried about the label and more connected to the act.

That is the invitation:

• Don't call it art.
• Don't worry about being an artist.
• Forget the nouns.
• Do the verbs.
• Just make stuff.

It sounds almost too simple.

That is why it works.

Use What Bothers You

Austin also offers a surprising creative tactic: pay attention to what you hate.

Not publicly. Not performatively. Not as a way to become bitter or cynical. But privately, as information.

Disgust can point toward values. Frustration can reveal desire. Jealousy can show you something you want. The things that bother you can become clues, if you are willing to ask what the opposite would look like.

Instead of turning your irritation into a rant, turn it into a project.

What would you rather see in the world? What is the opposite of the thing you cannot stand? What would it look like to make that?

That shift is powerful because it transforms complaint into creation.

It turns "I hate this" into "What if we made something different?"

People Pay Attention to Belief

Near the end of the conversation, Austin shares a line from Kim Gordon that I love:

"People will pay to watch other people believe in themselves."

That is true in art. It is true in music. It is true in entrepreneurship. It is true in leadership. It is true in life.

We are drawn to people who are alive in what they are doing. Not perfect. Not polished beyond recognition. Not optimized into sameness. Alive.

When someone believes in what they are making, that belief travels.

This does not mean you will always feel confident. It does not mean you will never doubt yourself. It does not mean every idea will work.

It means you keep returning to the work. You keep paying attention to what matters to you. You keep making the thing only you can make in the way only you can make it.

That is where the signal comes from.

About Austin Kleon

Austin Kleon is the New York Times bestselling author of a series of illustrated books about creativity in the digital age: Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work!, Keep Going, and Don't Call It Art.

He is also the author of Newspaper Blackout, a collection of poems made by redacting the newspaper with a permanent marker. His books have sold over two million copies and have been translated into more than 30 languages.

Austin's work has been featured on NPR's Morning Edition, PBS Newshour, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. New York Magazine called his work "brilliant," The Atlantic called him "positively one of the most interesting people on the Internet," and The New Yorker said his poems "resurrect the newspaper when everybody else is declaring it dead."

He has spoken for organizations including Pixar, Google, Netflix, SXSW, TEDx, Dropbox, Adobe, and The Economist. In previous lives, he worked as a librarian, a web designer, and an advertising copywriter. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and sons.

Follow Austin Kleon

• Website
• Don't Call It Art
• Newsletter
• Instagram
• X
• YouTube

Timecodes

• 04:24 – Austin returns to the show and talks about the new book
• 06:17 – How Austin's kids became his best creativity teachers
• 07:04 – What it means to take care of a creative person
• 10:43 – The childhood question that reveals what makes time disappear
• 18:34 – Why play is creative research and development
• 21:43 – Finding what you were not looking for
• 23:06 – How a fixed vision can blind you to what is actually in front of you
• 28:13 – Chase reflects on creating the right conditions for creative work
• 31:37 – Austin's equation: play equals time plus space plus materials
• 32:48 – Why tools should feel more like toys
• 35:25 – Reconnecting with the activities that made you feel alive as a kid
• 38:53 – Who were you before all this?
• 43:08 – Protecting attention from companies that want to take it
• 44:17 – Starting and ending the day without your phone
• 47:08 – Why friendship, hobbies, and shared activities matter
• 57:17 – Where the title Don't Call It Art came from
• 58:32 – Forget the nouns, do the verbs, just make stuff
• 01:00:01 – Why "wouldn't it be funny if…" is a clue worth following
• 01:03:15 – Finding your creative family tree
• 01:06:36 – How to use frustration and disgust as creative information
• 01:08:31 – Why people pay attention when you believe in what you are doing
• 01:09:44 – Austin's newsletter, book tour, and where to find his work

Questions to Ask Yourself

If you want to turn this episode into action, take a few minutes with these questions:

• What did I do as a kid that made hours pass like minutes?
• Where am I making creativity heavier than it needs to be?
• What noun am I clinging to that might be keeping me from doing the verb?
• What conditions do I need in order to make more freely?
• Do I have time, space, and materials available on a regular basis?
• What tool in my life could become more like a toy?
• Where is my attention being stolen before I have a chance to choose?
• What hobby, activity, or form of play would help me return to myself?
• What bothers me enough that it might contain a creative clue?
• What would I make this week if I stopped worrying whether it counted as art?

A Simple Practice for Making Like a Kid Again

Here's something practical you can do this week.

Set aside one uninterrupted hour. No phone. No audience. No outcome. No need to make something good.

Choose a space. Put a few materials in front of you. Paper and markers. A camera. A guitar. A notebook. Clay. Index cards. A laptop with the internet off. Whatever feels inviting.

Then begin with this prompt:

Wouldn't it be funny if…

Follow whatever comes next.

Do not evaluate it too early. Do not ask what it is for. Do not decide whether it is art. Do not turn it into a brand, a strategy, or a pitch deck.

Just make stuff.

Then notice how you feel. Notice what surprised you. Notice whether something small wants to keep going.

That is enough.

Final Thought

The longer I do this work, the more I believe that creativity is not something we need to earn. It is something we need to return to.

It was there before the labels. Before the pressure. Before the metrics. Before the platforms. Before the fear of being judged. Before we learned to ask whether we were allowed.

Austin's invitation in this conversation is simple, generous, and quietly radical:

Stop making creativity so precious that you cannot touch it.

Give yourself time. Give yourself space. Give yourself materials. Protect your attention. Find your friends. Pick up the toy. Follow the weird little idea. Let yourself begin before you know what it means.

Until next time: forget the nouns, do the verbs, and just make stuff.