2025: Your Year of Creative Influence
A common goal for Ten Minute Artist
Everyone talks about output - make more, create more, ship more. As if creativity was just about filling the wold with more… urgh, “content”.
But here's what I discovered after a 20-year detour between art school and making my first picture book: the secret isn't in how much you make.
It's in what you let in.
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Think about it. We're all drowning in input right now. Notifications. Feeds. Algorithms deciding what should catch our eye next. Everyone's shouting about what we should create and how we should create it.
But what if we've got it backwards?
Artists need to collect selectively.
That's what 2025 is going to be about for us: choosing what influences us, instead of letting the world choose for us.
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When we're kids, we're natural collectors. Nobody has to teach us. Nobody has to explain why. We collect rocks from the beach. Trading cards from the corner store. Stickers that make us smile. Leaves that caught our eye. Each of us collects differently, and that's not random - that's our creative DNA starting to show.
Somewhere along the way, we got the message that collecting isn't serious. That we need to focus on producing, not gathering. That inspiration should look a certain way, come from certain places.
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But what if collecting is serious?
In 2025, we're going to explore this together. Through daily practices and gentle experiments. Through starting and sharing, taking time and telling stories. Through making habits and raising energy, finding frameworks and feeling deeply. Through using what we have and venturing out into the world.
It's simpler than you might think, and more profound than you might expect. Ten minutes at a time, we'll build something remarkable: not just a creative practice, but a way of seeing the world that's truly our own.
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The world is fighting for your attention.
In 2025, we're fighting back - gently, daily, then minutes at a time.
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Here's to choosing what influences us.
Wishing you a Happy New Year, and a transformative 2025, May it be Your Year of Creative Influence!
PS: In January, the daily notes will only be available to paid subscribers, everyone will still get the weekly roundups. I want to build some momentum by being more open and vulnerable to the smaller audience, in my writing and my artist book. It’s a win for me and a win for anyone who wants to come along for the ride 🌊
(It’s $100 a year which works out to $8.33 a month, or get a monthly pass and binge for $20)
TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT
Prep your 2025 Artist Book
We might work through a few of these this year. Because we’re working in 10 minute increments and smaller book works best. I’m using a cheap A6 book from Muji.
We’ll be drawing and writing maybe even collaging, but the thing to remember is that we’re not aiming to make art. We’re aiming to create a collection of ideas, words and experiments that inspire us.
I’ll be dropping prompts daily, and roundups with additional thoughts weekly, use the prompts that work for you and feel free to do your own thing.
To really personalise this thing, create your own default prompt consisting of 3-5 questions. If ever you don’t know how to spend your 10 minutes, spend them answering these questions.
With words, pictures, collage - make it your own.
Write your 3-4 questions on the first spread of your artist book.
Mine are:
What did you do yesterday
What are you working on
What are you excited about
What are you grateful for
