Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered
up:: Books
- Type:nonfiction
- Author:: Austin Kleon
- Year published: 2014
- Series
- Year read:
- Month read: April 2021
Summary: Self-promotion for people who hate self-promotion
The key topic of this book is to be findable. Put your work out there while getting focused on doing your work better. This is one of the reason why I started this Digital garden: It allows for people to find me, my work and derive value from it and it creates the circumstances to do my passion (04 Reading and Writing) better.
Aim to be a part of a genius network
Rather than aiming to be a genius, aim to be a part of a scenius. Brilliance doesn’t appear in isolation.
I had this experience with my BibleGateway-to-Obsidian Script on Github. I stole an existing script, tweaked it for my use case and shared it. It provided a value to people. Then my script got forked, improved and shared.
It’s not about a single person writing a killer script but a network who is inspired by one another (Steal from your heroes) and value multiplies.
Share the process
→ Share the process There is the “artwork”, the finished piece, and the “art work”, the process. There is painting the noun and painting the verb.
Even when you don’t feel like you have anything to share, share the process.
Turn Flow into Stock: 🧱 Flow 🔽 🏠 Stock
Flow is the process. Stock is the finished piece. You can share your Flow without even knowing what the finished product is. Essays start from tweets. You find your voice by sharing.
Send out a daily dispatch
Share something small every day. At the end of your working day, find something you worked on and share it.
- Beginning 🔽
- Inspirations
- Middle
- Methods
- Work in process
- End
- Product
- What you’ve learned
- What didn’t make it
What are you working on?
Share your taste
You’re only as good as your record collection. –DJ Spooky
Who do you steal ideas from? What do you enjoy reading? Who do you enjoy listening to?
Attribute everything
Yes, Steal from your heroes. Then, give credit where credit is due. That allows people to go into the same rabbit holes that you went down.