This is an excerpt from my book, How Birds Learn to Fly. It’s not published yet, but I wanted to share a chapter I think is quite relevant for a lot of people right now. As more and more AI technologies force their way into our work, across all industries, we are quickly needing to adapt and shift not only the way we work, but also the way we think about working.

And one of the most difficult parts of this process is trying to keep up with new tech, new tools, and new workflows. Learning has become a key survival skill (more-so than ever), and being a good learner will inevitably be the thing that sets success apart from failure.

Personally, learning has always started with copying. Whether it’s languages or changing a tyre, I’ve learned the fastest by simply doing what someone else does first. From there, you start unpacking what’s actually going on, and then reconfiguring it to make it fit your “style”, and what works for you.

This chapter is called “copying the flock” (bird-themed, in line with the title of the book), and it looks a little deeper into why copying is not just a useful skill, but a fundamental part of learning.

Copy the flock

I really enjoy cooking. And I love following a recipe.

 My partner also really enjoys cooking. But they, on the other hand, prefer to cook intuitively: A dash of this, a splash of that, tasting, adjusting on the fly, vibing with the food as it sizzles. And I totally get the appeal of that. Honestly, I really do. There’s something freeing about throwing things into a pan and letting your senses decide the outcome.

But not always. At least, not at first.

For me, personally, there’s something deeply satisfying about having a recipe open in the kitchen while I cook. A recipe that someone else has already tested, tweaked, and perfected. A set of instructions, a field-guide, a set of notes and lessons and tips. I don’t have to think, so much as simply enjoy the process laid-out for me.

 I’m sure part of it is the structure a recipe provides. I like knowing what’s coming next. And there’s a rhythm to it that makes me feel like I’m doing something right. Another part of it is likely the pure satisfaction of weighing things out exactly—grams and millilitres, timing down to the minute. (Yes, I am absolutely the kind of person who preps everything in little bowls before I start. Mise en place is my cooking heaven.)

 But the real reason I love a recipe?

 Recipes gives me a starting point. And they give me permission to begin.

 A recipe, to me, is like a LEGO™ instruction booklet. I grew up sitting in front of LEGO™ box, with a mish-mash of pieces from every set I ever had, and just building Frankenstein things for hours.

 But the first time I open a new LEGO set? You bet I’m following those little illustrated steps to the tee.

 There’s something thrilling about building it exactly as it was intended. Seeing the final shape appear out of chaos. Understanding how the parts fit together before you go rogue. Following someone else’s plan gives you a kind of creative vocabulary. It shows you what’s possible. And once you’ve seen that—once you’ve really seen it—your own ideas start to multiply.

 And then, each time I broke apart and rebuilt the LEGO set, I remixed something. I tweaked. I adjusted. I made it my own. And that’s what this chapter is about.

 Let’s go back to cooking for a second, and take lentil curry for example, one of my all-time favourite dishes to prepare:

 1 cup dried lentils (green or brown),
400ml full-fat coconut milk,
400g canned crushed or diced tomatoes,
3 cups water,
1 diced onion,
4 garlic cloves (crushed),
1.5 tbsp minced ginger,
50g unsalted butter,
2 tbsp curry powder,
½ tsp turmeric powder,
½ tsp cayenne pepper,
1¼ tsp salt, and ½ tsp black pepper

The first time I made this, I followed it religiously. I used the exact ingredients, and the exact amounts. I timed everything. I even tried plating it like the photo. I wanted to recreate the entire experience. Almost like I was trying to become the person who wrote the recipe—standing in their kitchen, tasting what they tasted. It was a process of embodiment.

 But the second time around? I skipped the coconut milk. Delicious, but a bit too rich for me. I wanted something lighter, and I was leaning more on naan to round it out.

 By the third round, I started experimenting with the lentils—mixing red, yellow, and brown. Each one cooks differently, so I had to adjust the water and timing. But by then, I wasn’t guessing. I knew what I was working with. I understood the baseline well enough to riff off it.

 And that’s what copying is. That’s what learning looks like. It’s not stealing, and it’s not cheating: Copying is how we figure things out.

 As kids, we constantly copy. It’s actually all we know how to do. 

 We mimic sounds before we speak. We clap because someone clapped for us. We smile because someone smiled back. We watch, we try, we adjust. We copy.

 But somewhere along the way—usually around school—we start hearing a different message: Don’t copy. It becomes synonymous with laziness. With a lack of intelligence or creativity.

 In school, it’s called cheating.
In university, it’s called plagiarism.
On the playground, it’s called mocking.
In the creative world, it’s called unoriginal.

 And that association sticks.

 We grow up thinking that copying means failure. That if we don’t come up with something entirely new, totally from scratch, all on our own... then, it doesn’t count. It’s not real. It’s not “worthy.” It’s not a true achievement.

 And, to be honest with you, that’s a darn shame. Because copying—really good copying—is one of the most powerful tools we have. Not just as humans, but especially as freelancers.

To extend the cooking metaphor a little bit more (sorry): Before I ever made my first sourdough starter, I copied someone else’s process completely. Not just roughly; exactly. I used the same ratio of flour to water. I fed it on the same schedule. I compared my dough to their photos. I watched their starter rise and fall on YouTube before mine ever did.

 Only after I’d done that could I start making decisions on my own: Adjusting for my room temperature, trying different flours, tweaking the feeding times.

 And I’m not alone in that.

 As teenagers, we put together our wardrobes by copying people we admire: Musicians, actresses, people we pass on the street. We start with near replicas. Then, slowly, we personalise. We swap a colour. Layer something unexpected. Suddenly, it’s us.

 And as an artist, I do it too. Literally all the time. If you want to learn how to draw like a Renaissance painter, the best way to do it is by copying a Renaissance painting. Go and try to recreate the Mona Lisa. Not because you want to be Da Vinci—but because you want to learn like Da Vinci. You want to feel what the brush felt like in his hand. You want to understand the rhythm, the flow, the application of the paint on the canvas.

 Woodworkers follow pre-set plans for their first bench. Sewers cut their patterns from clothes they already own. Musicians play cover songs long before they write originals.

Copying is not a flaw in the creative process. It is the process.

 And honestly? I really wish someone had told me that earlier.

 When I started freelancing, I felt guilty about how much I borrowed. I’d look at other designers’ websites and think: “I really like how they describe their process. I really like how they designed their banner. Should I do mine like that? I wonder if I can use a similar layout. Is it wrong to price my packages like theirs?”

 At first, it felt like cheating. Like I wasn’t being authentic. Like I hadn’t “earned” my identity yet.

 But at some point I realized: Of course I hadn’t.

 I actually remember that moment really well: It was about two years after COVID became “the new normal”, and I was about one year into freelancing. I had clients, I had some income, things were OK. I was moving forward. I couldn’t complain.

 But I kept itching to do more. Be more. Level-up. Learn more. Earn more. It felt like the rite of passage to earning the freelancer badge. And I was consuming everything there was on freelancing.

 No, really: I was in a phase of getting 4-5 email newsletters a day that I often struggled to read; listening to every podcast under the sun while running, while cooking, while showering; signing up for every free meetup or conference I could... It was intense.

I was essentially rubbing Chris Do’s videos onto my gums, and liquidising pages from James Clear’s, Simon Sinek’s, and Mark Manson’s books into syringes I could then shoot directly into my veins. I was actively etching quotes, ideas, and frameworks into the soles of my feet—all in the hopes of achieving what they had achieved.

 But the conundrum I kept hitting was: I’m just copying them. None of this came from me. And it felt fake. I felt like a total phony.

 Then, one day, I read this line by Jean-Luc Godard:

 For the first time, I realised that I might not actually be a fraud after-all. It dropped the thought that I might simply be in a stage of processing. Of turning all of those inputs—the borrowed phrases, the echoed structures, the recycled ideas—into something new. Something shaped by my experiences. My voice. My clients. My weird little way of seeing the world.

 I was in the middle of learning. And that’s the part no one really talks about.

No one openly celebrates the phase where their work sounds a little too much like someone else’s. Or when their portfolio looks like a patchwork of borrowed styles. Or when they’re quoting people so often it feels like their personality is just a highlight reel of other people’s wisdom.

 But honestly? That’s just the messy, in-between bit. The part where you’re absorbing. Testing. Collecting ingredients. Trying on other people’s aprons until you can stitch your own. The baby that just starts saying any word they hear their parents say, so that it learns how to make sounds with its mouth-parts.

 And when I started thinking about it that way—not as fakery, but as foundation—everythingchanged.

 I was still learning. Still trying. Still figuring out what worked for me. And copying (respectfully, deliberately, and thoughtfully, of course) was helping me do that faster and better, than if I were pretending, I had it all figured out.

 My first newsletter was basically a carbon-copy of James Clear’s 3-2-1. I loved his format of short, poignant quotes as opposed to long-form writing, and I wanted to become that. I wanted to emulate that.

 At first, I did it daily. I was collecting quotes and phrases and sayings from all the articles, books, podcasts, and newsletter I consumed. And I was collecting all of those in something else I copied: Ryan Holiday’s Commonplace Book method. Essentially, a single organisation structure for bits and pieces of collected knowledge.

 And it worked. Until it didn’t.

 I ran out of momentum—not because I suck, but because it wasn’t me. It isn’t me. I copied what worked for James Clear. Other than the fact that he’s way more intelligent and experienced than I am, he’s simply a totally unique individual. He probably couldn’t copy much of my lifestyle, either, because we’re just different people.

 And I tried sending it out once a week, and then once a month, and then sporadically. Still, none of it worked. However, I learned so much from it, that I ended up creating a rhythm and a format that fit me perfectly. And that, funnily enough, ended up being long-form, and totally irregular. As and when inspiration hit me. Literally the complete opposite to Clear’s newsletter.

 I would not have had the know-how I needed if I hadn’t first tried to copy Clear. It took imitating, falling, and “flapping my own way” to create my own version that worked for me. We all fly differently.

 The same happened with pricing as a freelancer: I started by copy-pasting Chris Do’s method—and even copied his conversation with clients to explain his pricing. He always priced himself much higher (to quote: “Double your rates until someone says no.”). And he based that price on willingness from clients to invest in risk and value. I used the same model, and explained it to clients almost verbatim to how Chris said it. I literally tried it out for myself, word-for-word, until I realised what worked and what didn’t.

 Now, years later, my pricing model looks totally different to Chris’. But I had to start there. I needed a blueprint, a baseline, a lentil recipe to follow.

 That’s a huge part of learning how to fly.

 And “learning” is an important word here: Failure is an integral part of learning... and, by extension, an integral part of copying. We aim, we imitate, we land somewhere else—and the distance between where we tried to go, and where we ended up, becomes our growth.

 We need to go through that cycle a few times (aim, imitate, land, improve) before we learn that we actually want to aim for something slightly different... and, by the time we decide where “there” is, our aim has become much, much sharper.

 Freelancing, as with flying (and everything else), starts with imitation: You follow someone else’s recipe. You copy another bird’s wingbeats. You aim at someone else’s target. You cook it their way. You fly the way they do. You try hit their bullseye... and then you see what works, and what doesn’t.

 Only after allll of that, do you start figuring it out for yourself: You swap the spices. You move that feather around and flap a little slower here and there. You add something new. Leave something out.

 And, soon enough, it’s your dish. It’s your flight pattern. It’s your target.

 Birds don’t invent flying from scratch each time. They watch their parents, their siblings. They try, they fall, they flap some more. They mimic the movement. They get back up. They try again.

 Originality doesn’t come second, and definitely not first. Maybe even not third. And realising that is the difference between falling and flying.

 If you’re just starting out, or feeling like you’ve hit a wall, or wondering how other people seem to “just know” how to do it… then copy someone. Really. Find someone you admire, and copy them carefully. Thoughtfully. With purpose.

Copy the flock. And, when you’re ready, fly your own way.