Show Your Work

By Austin Kleon

Is is about the power of sharing your work with the world and getting yourself noticed. With tips and reasons why you should get yourself out there and let the others see your creative work.

The 10 Key Takeaways

  1. You don’t have to be genius.
  2. Think process, not product.
  3. Share something small every day.
  4. Open up your cabinet of curiosities.
  5. Tell good stories.
  6. Teach what you know.
  7. Don’t turn into human spam.
  8. Learn to take a punch.
  9. Sell out.
  10. Stick around.

1. You don’t have to be genius.

starts talking about this myth about creativity which is the myth of the lone genius. The lone genius is a person with superhuman gifts and talents that essentially pops up out of nowhere at specific points throughout history and when the inspiration strikes that lone genius will start producing astonishing work out of nowhere only to share it with the world later and also being cherished afterwards.

What if we can replace the word genius and come up with a word that sort of involves us the mortals as well and this is where the author comes in and and brings this new word to the table which is 'scenius' - now when thinking about creativity through the lenses of a scenius, what you will notice is that great ideas often come to life from an actual group of individuals connecting and interacting with each other.

You can think about poets painters coders curators thinkers and much more and these people end up creating an ecology of talent and when the genius part can often come in as an 'ego system,' scenius is an ecosystem.

If you look back closely at history many of the people who we think as lone geniuses were actually part of a whole scene of people who were supporting each other looking at each other's work copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas. Which is actually a pretty productive thing you can do thinking as genuis as scenius as a whole a mix of sparkling cocktails love and song, you can actually bring yourself together and push more of yourself out there.

2. Think process, not product.

Think about the process and not about the product and what this actually means is that you need to document your process and share it with the world along the way.

If we go back and look at the pre-digital era we can see that various artists such as painters, composers, writers, etc.. had to come up with a finished product in order to share it with the world.

It wouldn't be productive for say Mark Twain to start sharing one page or one chapter of his upcoming book in something like a newspaper and it would make more sense to share the whole book at once.

But we are living in a digital era so what a writer might do nowadays is to start sharing his process with the world using the abundance of the internet. The writer might share a couple of passages on twitter, an illustration on instagram, and even a teaser video on youtube.

This is how you can keep people engaged. So ideally you don't need to have a finished product to start sharing it with the world. Just think about it a lot of books nowadays started as actually blog posts or youtube scripts. Taking people behind the scenes with you, sharing what you are currently working on, the status of your project, the resources you are using, might be indeed the best thing to do.

There is this interesting idea about becoming a curator instead of a creator and you can start doing that by sharing a snap of what you are currently reading. Scribbling your books, hunting for quotes, digesting and filtering email newsletters, and processing and sharing all of that information with the world.

We can stop thinking about what is the actual goal of me sharing a random quote on twitter. There is no specific goal tied to it, you have no end product in mind. It's just you sharing your ideas with the world and watching them sort of go up and interact with each other... into this sort of like interconnected web of macro ideas and again this translates into thinking about this process and not about the end product.

You can try following this process every single day.

3. Share something small every day.

Again the internet has made this easier than ever. You have the ability to use so many channels to start sharing your projects, your writing, your photos, your code (Codepen), and you can actually start doing this right now.

You can pickup your phone and just scribble something and post it online. It's not that hard and it will take some time and you'll have some typing to do but trust me it will pay off and you'll have the abundance of the digital space and the unlimited potential of google that will support your next internet searches.

Remember that you are a node in a network and what you do and share can actually have tremendous impact on a person that might even be on the other side of the planet and even if you think that what you are sharing has already been said: just remember that what might be common for you might be mind-blowing to others as every single person every single one of us is in a different state on our life journey.

So open yourself up and start sharing.

4. Open up your cabinet of curiosities.

In the past, wealthy people used to have a so-called cabinet of curiosities that came in simply as an actual cabinet or could have extended to a room filled with all sorts of interesting things such as: old books, journals, minerals, strange jewels, exotic stones and other pieces of weird art.

What this type of activity did was actually fueling the possessor's imagination and you can consider the stuff you are actually reading and curating as fuel for your future work and the diversity of it can even be extreme.

I remember watching an episode of Breaking Bad where one of the characters was reciting a poem and that particular character was a great chemist as well. He was also fond of poetry and poetry was the thing that fueled his creative engine so that he could produce great work.

Do not let anyone tell you and make you feel bad about the things you really like and enjoy because if you really like it you like it there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure and that's really okay that's really what makes us special.

Everyone likes different things and sharing all of these different things with the world while also crediting and labeling what you are sharing will come back in your favor.

5. Tell good stories.

The next big thing the next key idea you might think about improving when sharing your work is learning to tell good stories. You can follow the story cycle model outline in the book which is the one then Dan Harmon (Rick & Morty) uses. Keep in mind that you can also find variations of this online as well and essentially if you want to tell good stories you might want to follow this particular cycle.

This is the Hero's Journey

The character starts in a zone of comfort but also the character wants something and in order to achieve that particular something the character must go out of his comfort zone and enter an unfamiliar situation.

Learn and adapt the character will get whatever she or he wants while paying an oftentimes heavy price for it only to return back to your home and overall stable and familiar situation but the character is now a new human.

This is an invisible structure you can use to tell your stories either in a video format in a portfolio a piece of writing and even live when talking to actual people and people are actually attracted to this type of invisible framework because it actually works.

6. Teach what you know.

Learn. Do. Teach.

Another key point I wanted to highlight is that you should teach people what you already know and I believe that this is indeed a nice tactic one can follow to first crystallize what you already know by explaining it to someone and second to expand and add up on what you already know because when you're talking and chatting to people and speaking about your processes and the tools you use.

You might be surprised that even people who are on the other side of the spectrum in terms of what you do even they will have something to say about your work thus you will be building interconnected feedback loops that will catapult both you and the audience forward.

You and they have nothing to lose, and a few things you can do to kick this off is to start building an email list, sending a newsletter where you are sharing things you are passionate about, and even if your mom is the only person reading it, it can still be a very useful writing exercise you can perform every week or month.

You can also start a blog for free and adjust it along the way in fact this is what I did when I started my personal newsletter. I first had the blog which was in my native language and then I decided to switch to English so that I can reach more people and slowly you will see that you will start building small pieces of assets and content and also a personal writing history that can be useful if you want to do a yearly review and see how and why you evolved.

7. Don’t turn into human spam.

It's all about sharing our ideas to create interaction, exchange thoughts, and giving & getting feedback.

It's not about simply pushing and pointing people to your work all the time. It's not about you, it's more about us, and this is where you should see yourself as an open node, essentially being ready to just both give and also receive one should also consider behaving like a human and not like a company or product.

Just like start talking to people in a casual way, without actually giving them the feeling that they are talking to a bot. This organic approach will most likely lead you to create a real connection with the person who's at the end of the line and someday who knows meet them in real life, so you should give give give give give give give and then do the ask.

8. Learn to take a punch.

When doing the ask you actually need to learn how to take a punch. The punch can come in various forms: a punch can be the criticism in the youtube comment section, a tag on twitter memes about your name face or hair, and even a strange email sent to you at 2 am.

When sharing your work online this will happen quite a lot and learning to take it absorb it and ultimately let it fuel you is indeed a meta skill you might want to start working on.

Always remember that you cannot make everyone on the planet agree with what you are saying or writing you might also want to remember that people in general always care about themselves first so even if someone might hate on you when writing a piece of harsh criticism, you know after they send that out they will most likely move on with your life and stop thinking about you for the rest of the day and this is exactly the same reason you should not care instead you should focus on the positive energies and vibes you're getting from people who do really enjoy your work and with whom you can actually connect.

This of course doesn't mean that you should remove yourself from full criticism, but only try scanning and finding the one that is really valuable and productive for your overall growth. As Teddy Roosevelt put it:

"it is not the critic who counts not the man who points out on how the strongman stumbles or where the doer of deeds would have done them better the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena."

9. Learn to Sell out.

Within the abundance of the digital era one needs to learn how and when to sell out which is the next key point of the book and the problem nowadays is that more and more people have ego-related issues, they actually prefer being starving artists, instead of trying to find ways to convert their work into their daily bread.

Throughout history what you will notice is that the most well-known pieces of art were actually made for money. The painter michelangelo painted the ceiling of the sistine chapel only because the pope commissioned. The godfather was written by Mario Puzo because he was 45 and something like 20k dollars in debt.

So you need to learn and understand the sex cash theory.

This is essentially a way of understanding that the creative person has two jobs the sexy one is the one you would do for free the one you really enjoy the one that fills you with joy and song but then you'll also have the cash related one the one that pays the bills the idea is to get yourself into that sweet spot where you can cover both but you will find situations when this is not going to be the case.

10. Stick around and keep going

The final piece of advice is to stick around and keep going which is actually the next book of this author i might do a review of that one as well.

What you must understand is that there is no ultimate recipe as change often comes from the compound effect of daily work that will in the long run change how we view and interact with the world.

SXSW

"Vampires want to drain us and Spammers want to drown us."

Don't ask for what you haven't given yourself (i.e. Kickstarter).

These are those who have been inflicted with the 'endless self-promotion' bug.

You can't be a good writer unless you also read a lot (although I would argue there are a few exceptions - as I've worked with many authors who don't read other books, and I often ask the question - am I creating or consuming?).

Google Books Talk

Taking Action

This perspective of teaching and sharing to me are the same - I am naturally drawn to teach others what I know. I've created hundreds of tutorials for others. Many I've created for myself because I want to be able to recall the wisdom when it's needed.

When you teach others what you have learned, you improve your ability to do it. When you know it well enough to perform it (including speaking or publishing), you take a step toward mastery.

Step 1: Learn a new skill.

Step 2: Practice until you become skilled at it. If you fail, try again, and again, and again. Do it until you've mastered it. Trial and error teaches us what we need to know.

Step 3: Teach your newly acquired skill to others. Teaching others requires you to fully assimilate what you've already learned. It's similar to having to explain an idea to someone. You may think you know it, but it's not until you have to explain it to someone else that you discover what you don't know.

(Mastery) Step 4: Perform! When you perform for others, errors are emphasized, and you will likely experience some emotion as well (i.e. embarrassment). As a result, you will be less likely to make the mistake next time. A secret to remembering something is to anchor it with emotion. We are far more likely to remember something that has an emotional element connected to it. Even if you are just performing for a few loved ones, you’ll be more likely to improve.

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