The Creative Act by Rick Rubin — and What It Means for Technologists

Book number two of the holiday: The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin.

As a technologist, I often hear the phrase "equal part art and science." If I'm honest, the artist in me has never quite manifested in the traditional sense. I cannot sing. I cannot draw for toffee. But I picked up this book on a hunch — and what a pleasant surprise it turned out to be.

Not only did I find so many unexpected parallels with the book I'd just finished (PITCH by Danny Fontaine), but I came away with a genuine shift in how I see things.

In architecture and technology leadership, we talk about views and viewpoints — examining a system from different angles to understand what would otherwise remain invisible. But this book challenged me to ask: how often do we apply that same rigour to ourselves? To our own worldview, our biases, and our frameworks for how things are "supposed to be done"?

Taking that step requires courage. Many will look at you as though you're a heretic simply for questioning what everyone else accepts without thought. But that discomfort — that willingness to see what you have always taken for granted through a completely fresh lens — is precisely where real growth lives.

Barry O'Reilly and his Residuality Theory is a great example of this in practice: the courage to take a deeply unconventional approach to architecture and articulate it clearly, even in the face of resistance.

The line from the book I keep returning to:

"So little was needed to make the leap from mediocrity to greatness."

And this, which I think is worth sitting with for a moment:

Don't let what you've become hold you back from moving forward.

#Holiday #Reading #AlwaysLearning #Creativity #Leadership