Show Your Work (Austin Kleon)

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. Think of the process, not the product.

2. Make your work available to others often.

3. Follow your curiosities, it’ll turn into enthusiasm.

🎨 Impressions

I can tell this is one of those books which I’ll hold on to and come back to every once in a while. It really changes how you see the value of making your work available to others, no matter what it is.

It’s difficult to read this book and not feel motivated to start creating something. Whatever you’re interested in at the time.

I knew of this book before creating this blog, from what I’d heard this book would come in handy and it most certainly will.

Who Should Read It?

If you’re remotely creative, or you produce work which takes time and someone could see your process of beginning with nothing and ending with something then you could gain a lot from this book.

Reading this book really does change the way you think about your work, and encourages you to put yourself out there – Only good things come from that.

☘️ How the Book Changed Me

• It motivated me to want to share more of my work, and my process for getting my work done. Shortly after reading this book, I was tasked with delivering some challenging training for work. The ideas from this book turned my nerves into excitement to share what knowledge I had.

• I really enjoyed the book – It’s made me want to read more books like it.

• It made me more okay with putting myself out there in the form of this blog.

✍️ My Top 3 Quotes

• In order for connection to happen, you have to allow yourself to really be seen – really seen.

• Carving out a space for yourself online, somewhere where you can express yourself and share your work, is still one of the best possible investments you can make with your time

• Teaching people doesn’t subtract value from what you do, it actually adds to it. When you teach someone how to do your work, you are, in effect, generating more interest in your work. People feel closer to your work because you’re letting them in on what you know.

📒 Summary + Notes

Share like an artist

Stop waiting for a perfectly polished product to unveil, just start sharing what you have start valuing your process.

Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating. You need to find a way of putting yourself out there and getting discoverable, while you focus on getting really good at what you do.

I wanted to come up with a kind of beginner’s manual for this way of operating, so here’s what I came up with: a book for people who hate the very idea of self-promotion. An alternative, if you will, to self-promotion. I’m going to try to teach 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.

All you have to do show your work.

Principles

1. You don’t have to be a genius

Find a scenius – Move away from the dangerous myth of the lone genius.

Creativity is most often successful when it’s social, embrace the model of ‘scenes’ of creative people rather than trying to tackle the world on your own. This opens the door to us normal folk who don’t have an IQ of 160. You don’t have to be an expert, and there’s no entry fee.

Be an amateur – You have little to lose as an amateur. Taking risks and experimenting is how you’ll grow and discover new things.

As an amateur, you’ll probably be better at teaching other amateurs, as you can relate. Once you’re an expert you lose the perspective of the very people you’re trying to teach.

Exposing yourself as someone who doesn’t know things yet can be blindingly daunting so it’s important to slap yourself with some reality checks – Have a morning read of the obituaries, sounds crazy, it forces you to calibrate your worries. Being seen as an amateur is not a bit deal.

2. Think process. Not product

Take people behind the scenes – Art work, not just artwork. The majority of material out there only shows the finished product, the artwork. But there’s huge value in the art work, the work which goes into the final piece – And some of the people who are interested in the artwork will enjoy the behind taken behind the scenes.

If you work on something for 100 days but only the last day is spent publishing it, that’s 99% of your time which has gone unleveraged. This made sense in the pre-digital age but now it’s easier than ever to share.

Become a documentarian of what you do

Work often feels like there’s nothing to show for it at the end of the day, but most often is and you just need to change your lens, scoop up whatever footprint you’ve left, and present it up in the right way.

There are a lot of parallels here with the ideas in
Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks
. Using his Homework For Life technique will help identify those unassuming moments of value in a process.

3. Share something small every day

Sturgeon’s Law – 90% of everything is crap.

We’re often told Quality > Quantity. This is only true to an extent, improving your quality comes through pumping out the quantity and gradually getting better.

Setting goals definitely isn’t a bad idea but you need to avoid the trap of being so fixated on where you want to be that you lose track of how you want to get there, instead treat each and every day as a more achievable milestone. Persistence over many days will always come out on top.

Buy your own domain – It’s an investment in yourself, your own online real-estate.

www.[InsertYourNameHere].com – Once you have it, don’t think of your website/blog as a self-promotion machine, use it as a self-invention machine.

It can sound super technical, but it’s really not. There are tonnes of guides you can follow. I personally followed Thomas Frank’s guide on CollegeInfoGeek using HostGator and installing WordPress.

4. Open up your cabinet of curiosities

Share your interests – The reading feeds the writing, which feeds the reading, which feeds the writing. You get the idea.

Your curiosities, your interests, what you fill your mind with, these are all things which reflect in your work and there’s a good chance that they’d have a positive impact on others too. Just make sure you credit your resources.

5. Tell good stories

Good stories are compelling, the listener becomes invested, they want to know what happens in the end. The better you get at telling and sharing your stories – the better your ROI (return on investment).

Everyone has great stories to tell, they often just don’t know how to tell them. Your work often won’t speak for itself as people love to believe, you need to give it a voice and give it a good one.

6. Teach what you know

The minute you learn something, turn around and teach it to others. Share your reading list. Point to helpful reference materials. Create tutorials and post them online. Use pictures, words, and video. Take people step by step through part of your process.

When you share your knowledge and work with others, you receive an education in return. It’ll bring you into contact with similar minded people

7. Don’t turn into human spam

You have to be an open node, ask for recommendations, absorb what others have to offer. Keep this in mind when sharing, you also need to listen. Oversharing detracts from what you do and it pushes people away.

Assume That The Person You Are Listening To Might Know Something You Don’t – Jordan Peterson

The Vampire Test – “Whatever excites you, go to it. Whatever drains you, stop doing it” – Derek Sivers

8. Learn to take a punch

When you put your work out there in the world you have to be ready for the good, but also the bad. Some people will give their criticisms and that’s okay. If you lean into your vulnerabilities it’ll help you grow, but shying away from them won’t get you anywhere.

The trick is not caring what everybody thinks of you and just caring what the right people think of you. – Brian Michael Bendis

9. Sell out

We need to get over our “starving artist” romanticism. There’s nothing wrong or evil about money. Charging money for stuff doesn’t hamper your creativity. If your work is worth it, people will be willing to pay for it.

We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies – Walt Disney

Keep a mailing list – it’s a simple model, collect the emails of like-minded people who share your interests, they’ve trusted you with their email address because they’re enjoying good free content – do not break that trust. Where you have something remarkable or worthy of selling, let them know. It will come in handy.

Pay it forward – When you come across success, help others who reach out to you, share opportunities with others.

10. Stick around

Work is never finished, only abandoned – Paul Valery

If you look at any artists who’ve managed to to achieve lifelong careers you can pick up on the same pattern, they’ve been able to persevere through highs and lows (both are inevitable).

Be a chain-smoker and never lose momentum. Instead of taking breaks in between projects or work and waiting for feedback or some form of validation, hop right onto the next idea. Even if you’re not sure it’s the right idea, just do something.