Range Widely

Since reading his book Steal Like an Artist years ago, I’ve found artist and author Austin Kleon’s work to be both calming and inspiring. He has helped me get out of my own way and engage more wholeheartedly in the act of creation.

Ernest Hemingway had a rule for ending his writing days: he stopped while he still knew exactly what would come next—sometimes, reportedly, in the middle of a sentence. As Hemingway told the Paris Review in 1958: “You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.” I stole this idea, and you should too.

If TIME Magazine had a feeling of the year, a top contender for 2026 would be overwhelmed. It doesn’t matter your age, geography, or gender—everyone is feeling the effects of an increasingly chaotic world. The sheer volume of input is beyond our capacity to manage it. And yet, most people have some semblance of the same goals: We want to live full and textured lives. We want to contribute and be useful. We want to throw ourselves into meaningful projects and pursuits.

It's not about rugged individualism It’s graduation season, that special time of year when young people wear robes while booing mentions of AI, and when I get to hear Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” cited regularly — and almost always erroneously. Here is the famous snippet that shows up at commencement: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” It is invoked as an ode to rugged individualism.

Tomorrow night, I’ll be back home in Chicago for a conversation with the New York Times reporter Megan Twohey, who won a Pulitzer for her work investigating Harvey Weinstein. Megan and I will be back in our high school auditorium for this discussion! If you’re in the Chicago area, come by. The event is free (details here), and the first 200 attendees will get a free copy of Inside the Box, courtesy of the Family Action Network, which is hosting the event.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post in which I talked about the ritual and discipline that has characterized Isabel Allende’s writing for the past 43 years—during which she’s produced a bestseller roughly every 18 months. She is the most translated female Spanish-language author ever. Isabel didn’t start writing until she was nearly 40. But once she started, the constraints she crafted—like starting a book every January 8th if the previous one was finished—powered her creativity.

When I was a competitive runner, I had a coach who used to say: “The hay is in the barn.” The expression obviously comes from farming. Once the hay is cut, dried, and stored in the barn, the harvest is secure. You can't add to it, and you don't need to worry about rain ruining it in the field. Whatever you've got is what you've got. My coach was talking about our training. Within a week or so of a big race, there wasn’t anything more you could do.

Modern life is relentless about adding things to our plates. More obligations, more information streams, more choices, more meetings, more tabs, more apps, more channels to check. And, increasingly, more productivity tools that carry an even bigger promise: that we can finally do it all. I’ve spent time recently with a few different organizations that are rushing to implement AI tools, and the pattern is striking.

For Inside the Box(out on Tuesday!), I spent time reporting about Pixar, including with cofounder Ed Catmull. (He is utterly fascinating. We watched a film together, and it took us seven hours to get through the first hour of the film because we paused to talk so frequently.) Pixar may be viewed as a place of unfettered imagination, but it is in fact a place of many fetters that channel creative ideas into creative achievements. Limits and guardrails abound.

We are one week away from the publication of Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better. Who’s nervous? Me?? Surely not. It is an interesting thing to spend a few years in your head, fascinated by a topic, sharing your ideas with only a tiny number of people you know, and then, all in a flash, to find out what strangers think. “Abrupt” is a word that comes to mind. Also exciting, unusual, daunting. A few early reviews of the book are now in, so I have a taste.