Show Your Work
Show Your Work!:10 Ways To Share Your Creativity And Get Discovered by Austin Kleon
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
If you share your work online - great things will happen.
It doesn't matter if you're an amateur, just document your progress and process.
Be open to sharing what you're working on and consistently post bits and pieces of your work and ideas.
🎨 Impressions
This is a visual, creative book that condenses the ideas around showing you work into a powerful, short and concise set of ideas that will reveal the magic of sharing your work online.
How I Discovered It
This is one of Ali Abdaal's most life-changing book. Also, as I want to continue to share more online, I thought this would provide me with a boost!
Who Should Read It?
If you want to be more creative, want to create an audience, unsure what to do with your life, are scared of putting yourself out there: this book is for you.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you’ll attract people who love that kind of stuff. It’s that simple.
Become a documentarian of what you do.
Once a day, after you’ve done your day’s work, go back to your documentation and find one little piece of your process that you can share.
📒 Summary + Notes
Imagine if your next boss didn’t have to read your résumé because he already reads your blog. Imagine being a student and getting your first gig based on a school project you posted online. Imagine losing your job but having a social network of people familiar with your work and ready to help you find a new one. Imagine turning a side project or a hobby into your profession because you had a following that could support you.
Or imagine something simpler and just as satisfying: spending the majority of your time, energy, and attention practicing a craft, learning a trade, or running a business, while also allowing for the possibility that your work might attract a group of people who share your interests. All you have to do is show your work.
This book teaches you how to think about your work as a never-ending process, how to share your process in a way that attracts people who might be interested in what you do, and how to deal with the ups and downs of putting yourself and your work out in the world
1. You don’t have to be genius.
If you look at the most creative individuals, they were part of the creative group of collaborators. Good work isn’t created in vacuum. It’s about the ideas you share, the connections you make, the conversations you start.
Be an amateur. They aren’t afraid of experimenting, making mistakes, trying something new.
You find your voice by using it. If you want people to know what you do and what you care about, you have to share.
2. Think process, not product.
Take people behind the scenes. Humans are interested in other human beings and what they do. Audiences want to be part of the creative process.
Become a documentarian of what you do. Write down you thoughts. You’ll start to feel you’re making progress looking back at your early work.
3. Share something small every day.
Send out a daily dispatch. Forget about decades, years, months, they are completely human-made, but the day has a rhythm. After you’ve done your work, find one little piece of the process you can share.
Ask yourself ’So what?’ before sharing anything. Don’t overthink it. The act of sharing is one of generosity — you’re putting something out there because it might be helpful or entertaining.
Don’t think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine.
4. Open up your cabinet of curiosities.
No guilty pleasures. When you find things you genuinely enjoy, don’t let anyone else make you feel guilty about it.
Credit is always due. If you share the work of others, it’s your duty to make sure that creators of this work get proper credit. This way you leave bread-crumbs trail that follow back to your source of inspiration.
5. Tell good stories.
Create a story around your work. We as humans naturallywant to know the story behind the object, where it came from, how they were made, and who made them.
Keep your bio sweet and short: just two sentences.
6. Teach what you know.
Share your trade secrets. Out-teach your competition. The minute you learn something, turn around and teach it to others. When you share your knowledge with the world, you receive an education in return.
7. Don’t turn into human spam.
If you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader first. People often don’t want to listen to your ideas, they want to tell you theirs. If you want fans, you have to be a fan first. If you want to be accepted by a community, you have to first be a good citizen of that community.
Stop worrying about followers and if you want more followers, be someone worth following. Have you tried making yourself a more interesting person? If you want to be interesting, you have to be interested. Don’t waste your time making connections instead of trying to get good at what you do.
8. Learn to take a punch.
When you put your work out into the real world, you have to be ready for criticism. Your work is something you do, not who you are. Keep moving. Every bit of criticism is an opportunity for new work.
Block trolls, someone who isn’t interested in improving your work, only provoking with hateful, aggressive and upsetting comments.
9. Sell out.
Pass around the hat. When the audience starts gathering around the work you produce and you’re confident that your product is truly worth something, ask for money in return and put a price that you think is fair.
Keep a mailing list. Even if you don’t have anything to sell right now, you should always be collecting emails from people who came across your work.
Make more work for yourself. If an opportunity comes along that will allow you to do more of the kind of work you want to do, say ‘Yes’. If an opportunity comes along that would mean more money, but less of the kind of work you want to do, say ’No’.
When you have success, it’s important to use whatever you acquired to help along the work of the people who’ve helped you get where you are.
10. Stick around.
Don’t quit your show. Every career is full of ups and downs, and when you’re in the middle of living out your life, you don’t know whether you’re up or down and what’s about to happen next. The people who get what they’re after are often those who stick around the longest. You can’t plan on anything, just go about your work every day without despair.
Go away so you can come back. Don’t burn out, find the time for new inspiration.
Start over. When you feel like you’ve learned whatever there is to learn from what you’re doing, it’s time to change course and find something new to learn so that you can move forward. Have the courage to get rid of your old work and rebuild new things from scratch.
