Copywork: The Fastest Way to Learn Any Creative Skill

The move is simple: find work you love and copy it exactly, by hand. Sam did this with David Ogilvy ads — he spent hours every day for six to eight months during what he calls his "apprentice period," copying Ogilvy's work word for word on paper. The goal is not to steal. The goal is to internalize the texture of what makes great work great.

This applies far beyond writing. For web design, Sam recommends saving 30 to 40 websites that speak to you over three to four weeks, then printing them out and literally drawing them pixel by pixel — where the buttons are, what they say, how they are laid out. If you are a designer, do it in Figma. The point is the same: when you reproduce something by hand, you notice things you would never catch by just looking.

For fashion, Sam unfollowed everyone on Instagram, then re-followed only people whose style he admired. He figured out what brands they were tagging and bought the same stuff. It sounds almost too simple, but he says the intense exposure combined with blind copying is what eventually trains your eye to recognize patterns and develop preferences that are genuinely your own.