Sixteen Great Books on Creativity and Good Habits

Eric Maierson
1 min readFeb 3, 2022

A few years back, I taught a class on creativity at Rochester Institute of Technology. Below are some of the books that inspired that class, plus a few new ones as well.

  1. Art Matters by Neil Gaiman
  2. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
  3. Creative Quest by Questlove
  4. Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
  5. How to be An Artist by Jerry Saltz
  6. How To Not Always Be Working by Grace Marlee
  7. I Work Like a Gardner by Juan Miro
  8. Indistractable by Nir Eyal
  9. Linchpin by Seth Goden
  10. Make It Till You Make It by Brendan Leonard
  11. Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, and Keep Going by Austin Kleon
  12. The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
  13. The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday
  14. This Is Water by David Foster Wallace
  15. Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferris
  16. Your Art Will Save Your Life by Beth Pickens

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