Do the F*cking Work: Lowbrow Advice for High-Level Creativity

Do the F*cking Work: Lowbrow Advice for High-Level Creativity

70 ratings 4.2 out of 5 stars

A wake-up call for creatives who need that inspiring kick to finally create the thing they’ve been meaning to make, while celebrating the journey of trying, learning, and failing.Over the last eight years, Jason Bacher and Brian Buirge of Good F*cking Design Advice (GFDA) have made a name for themselves in the international design community, inspiring creatives, artists, and entrepreneurs with their products, weekly e-mails, and most important, their unorthodox advice about work ethic and the creative process. Do the F*cking Work is a collection of 100 beautifully packaged pieces that showcase their irreverent advice—inspiration that will help unstick even the most dedicated procrastinators. Covering everything from drinking your morning coffee to handling productive criticism, from embracing failure to rejecting the status quo, their insights upend conventional thinking and teach you to embrace and celebrate the journey of creation—the joy of trying, failing, learning, and sometimes failing again. To make something good we have to make some mistakes. Bacher and Buirge teach you to embrace the unknown and to f*cking laugh at yourself during the process. There is a method to their madness—a surprising reassurance that is baked into their bluntness. We’re all trying, messing up, and trying again. And there’s joy to be found in that—something we often overlook in our rush to get everything done and get it right the first time. With personal insights, actionable advice, stylish visuals, and lots of colorful language, Do the F*cking Work will leave you feeling renewed and inspired, and will make you see that the value of work is as much about the process as the outcome.

TL;DR: You deserve this book. It will make you better and it's fun to read.DTFW is full of advice that is both wise to follow and beautiful to look at, and it's all nestled among pages of an engaging story. Reading it was a mix of out-loud laughter and "oh, crap" moments when advice hit a bit too close to home. Make no mistake, this is not feel-good "you can do it!" encouragement--it will challenge you, if you let it. I had to stop and reflect on almost every piece of advice, because it was applicable, it was real, and frankly it hurt a little bit to consider. This one hit me hard:"Stop f'ing around.Stop whoring out your attention to online shopping and cat videos. All those distractions are going to impact your performance, and you're bound to end up with something leaking from your creativity" (page 38).There's more to this one, and text doesn't do it justice, but I *know* I've been doing this lately, and I *know* it's getting in the way of achieving my goals. And apparently, so do Brian, Jason, and Jason, damn them. And they seem to keep knowing, page after page.The tough advice is lightened by hilarious storytelling about the origins and growing pains of the authors' company, which both motivates the advice and makes the book a bit easier to read than page after page of nonstop painful advice would be. As a result, I'm coming away from it with a strong urge to *do things* rather than cry about how everything is hard (even though it is).