Why is everyone still obsessed with ‘The Artist’s Way’?

If you could lead five alternative lives, what would they be? A beekeeper? A jazz singer? A rollerblader? If you’re not in the mood for dreaming, maybe take yourself out on a trash walk; collect dried leaves, browning bottle caps and scraps of paper that call out to you. Head to a park, find a tree that feels friendly and divulge your deepest, darkest secrets to it. Then write a thank you note to your fears, acknowledge how they may have protected you but now you’re ready to let go and start anew. Sit with that feeling.

Wait, don’t switch tabs yet! That isn’t us reeling you in with therapy speak; it’s just a little taste of The Artist’s Way, the self-help book that Olivia Rodrigo, Bella Hadid and 9.8 million TikTokers swear by. Doechii—yes, Grammy-award winning Doechii—documented her journey with the book on YouTube and even credited it with breaking her writer’s block. This generous endorsement brought the title back to the fore. If you’re on the spiritual-productivity-do-better side of Instagram, you’ve probably seen creators taking themselves on weekly artist dates or waxing poetic about their Morning Pages, a core tool of the book that asks you to journal at the start of the day to weed through your thoughts. A mind dump, you can call it.

When Julia Cameron published the workbook/self-help juggernaut in 1992, little did she know that 30-something years later, young millennials and Gen Z would be her biggest disciples. As optimisation becomes the gold standard, self-help books at large are having a resurgence—Andy Frisella’s 75 Hard promises to help you win the war with yourself, while Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act steers closer to Cameron’s idea of selling creativity.

With The Artist’s Way specifically, a crucial plus point is that it is a content gold mine—every chapter asks you to peel back a layer, to be vulnerable, and to be okay with looking silly, all things we love to see on the internet. Plus, at a time when we’re seeking authenticity and moments of reflection, what better way to slow down than with a book that promises to bring you closer to your inner child—the buzzword of our decade—and unveil who you are as an artist amidst the deluge of AI slop?

It is this allure that drew Mumbai-based Shachi Ankolekar to the book. After sitting on it for a year, the model and creative finally took the plunge in March 2025, and has since carried it on every holiday and work trip. “Even if I have an early call time, I do my Morning Pages; it helps me get all the malice out,” the 24-year-old says, adding that the stream-of-consciousness writing helps her safely express her frustration about the political state of the world.

Ankolekar also finds comfort in the book’s fourth chapter, ‘Recovering a Sense of Integrity’, which unloads the shame attached to jealousy. “It helped me realise that envy is a natural emotion and when you dive deeper into it you can discover more about who you want to be. The book has actually helped me be better friends with other artists and be more collaborative instead of competitive,” she explains.

Similarly, for Bengaluru-based Ishaan Trehan, 27, The Artist’s Way became a tool to fight his derogatory self-talk. “It felt preachy at first, but I got behind it eventually,” the marketing professional shares. “This one prompt asks you to think of the people who evoke negative emotions, and that was a really difficult but revealing chapter for me.”

While its “life-changing” rave reviews and raging popularity are enticing, the self-help book continues to be a hit and a miss for many. First, you have to be willing to commit to it. The workbook is actually that: a lot of work, hours of reflecting, of writing, of weekly solo dates, of time-consuming creative endeavours. Both Anolekar and Trehan haven’t completed the book and aren’t feeling the pressure to do so, but this can be tricky for those of us who thrive under structure and deadlines. Not being able to keep up with the book may feel overwhelming and only inhibit your creativity further.

And if you find a way around this, you have to get comfortable with the book’s relentless incantation of God—“The Creator” or “The Universe”, as Cameron writes interchangeably. The author talks about creativity as a gift from God, and the divine as a collaborator in your art. A prompt even asks you to make a God Jar, a physical container where you symbolically hand over your worries, fears, and desires to a higher power. It is challenging to read The Artist’s Way without submitting to its call for spirituality, and this can be alienating to many, especially as Gen Z is seen as the least religious generation of our times.

“The God talk really set me off; it felt seeped in divisive, religious propaganda. If I don’t listen to my mother when she asks me to sit in a satsang, why should I listen to Martin Scorsese’s ex-wife about serving the creator?” shrugs Mumbai-based Pari Bhatt. (Yes, fun fact, Cameron is Scorsese’s ex-wife, and apparently the book may never have happened if not for the divorce.) The 24-year-old UX designer picked up the book after discovering it on Reddit and swiftly gave up when the talk of the cosmos became unavoidable.

But one man’s trash really is another’s treasure, because this very woo-woo quality sealed the deal for Trehan. “I talk to the universe every day and carry a tarot deck in my bag, so the book’s spiritual beliefs align with mine,” he says. “But make the book your own; don’t take it so seriously. If a prompt feels weird, just skip it. At the end of the day, it’s about unblocking your creativity, not the author’s.”

Maybe that’s the answer: we take things too gravely for our own good. Perhaps the key to The Artist’s Way is to stop being so pedantic and to just take what you like and leave what you don’t. Solo dates to the museum and making a collage of your imaginary friends does sound kind of fun even if collecting trash doesn’t. Try it and see what you think?