Reddit reviews The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life

Articles from reputable sources are a decent source of knowledge, but some quality business books will get you an infinitely better understanding of concepts. Here is my personal business book list if you want to get a "universal generalist" understanding of business:

• Business Creation - The Lean Start-up
  
• Value Creation - How to Make Millions With Your Ideas
  
• Marketing - Getting Everything You Can Out Of Everything You Got / All Marketers Are Liars
  
• Sales - Pitch Anything
  
• Value Delivery - Indispensable
  
• Accounting/Finances - Financial Intelligence / Accounting Made Simple
  
• Understanding the Human Mind - Making Sense of Behavior
  
• Productivity - Getting Things Done
  
• Problem Solving - The 80/20 Principle
  
• Decision Making - Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions
  
• Negotiation - 3-D Negotiation
  
• Management - Growing Great Employees
  
• Project Management - Making Things Happen
  
• Statistics - Marketing Metrics
  
• Corporate Knowledge - The Effective Executive
  
• Corporate Strategy - Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies
  
• Creativity - The Creative Habit
  
• Personal Finance - Your Money or Your Life
  
  I am graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce Honors degree in May and I can easily say that one of these books (average price ~25$) has significantly more content than most individual classes I have taken (~600$). However, keep in mind that business knowledge and business acumen are two entirely different things. Knowledge is easily obtainable through books like these, and acumen is the result of applied experience with decision making. In short, it is one thing to be book smart, but it is another to get out there and actually apply it. No one can give you that in the form of an article or book - you have to do that yourself.
  
  edit: added links to amazon

Say no more, fam.

You don't need a degree to run a business. Having your own business allows you to experiment with these books first hand instead of taking some professor's word for it. Professor's usually just read what the book says. If they were actually good at running a business they'd probably be doing that.

• Business Creation - The Lean Start-up
  
  
  
• Value Creation - How to Make Millions With Your Ideas
  
  
  
• Marketing - Getting Everything You Can Out Of Everything You Got / All Marketers Are Liars
  
  
  
• Sales - Pitch Anything
  
  
  
• Value Delivery - Indispensable
  
  
  
• Accounting/Finances - Financial Intelligence / Accounting Made Simple
  
• Understanding the Human Mind - Making Sense of Behavior
  
  
  
• Productivity - Getting Things Done
  
  
  
• Problem Solving - The 80/20 Principle
  
  
  
• Decision Making - Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions
  
  
  
• Negotiation - 3-D Negotiation
  
  
  
• Management - Growing Great Employees
  
  
  
• Project Management - Making Things Happen
  
  
  
• Statistics - Marketing Metrics
  
  
  
• Corporate Knowledge - The Effective Executive
  
  
  
• Corporate Strategy - Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies
  
  
  
• Creativity - The Creative Habit
  
  
  
• Personal Finance - Your Money or Your Life

Seconded for On Writing. And to add to that "The Creative Habit" by Twyla Tharp.

> What were very wrong reasons if you don't mind disclosing?

the very wrong reasons:

• she was open to and celebrated me loving her very deeply. Problem: I never thought to check to see if she was feeling and acting the same way in return (in kind) or just merely mirroring me
  
• we came from the same town out west, had grown up with an almost identical value set. Problem: shared "general" values are even worse than shared "lifestyle" values at positing a false feeling of compatibility
  
• it seemed that we were both artists because we both had skills in a certain artistic field. Problem: she doesn't have the spirit of an artist, working every single day, committed to and constantly refining and improving the artistic process, being totally committed to the artist's way as expressed so very well in Twyla Tharp's excellent book The Creative Habit
  
  

1. turn off the internet!
   
   
2. consult The Creative Habit and The War of Art.
   
   
3. understand that creativity is like a muscle, it will become stronger and more dependable as long as you use it regularly and 'feed' it properly to encourage its growth.
   
   
4. become familiar with the concept of 'scratching' (i.e. different things different artists do to glean inspiration, such as going to a movie, going for a bike ride, people watching, going to a library, etc) - try every one of these you can think of, and figure out which ones work best to nurture your creative habit.
   
   
5. we all suffer from the 'what would this person think?' syndrome at some point- whether its a musical peer, loved one, or whatever - there's always somebody in our subconscious mind we're afraid of letting down or being judged by. write a song about how you're not afraid of that, and you won't worry about it anymore for a while.

If you're looking at it from a purely productivity/developing habits that support continual creativity perspective, I love Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit.