Show Your Work!

🤔 Impressions:

This is a fantastic book that provides insights into why we should share our work and progress with others. It essentially describes ways for creatives to get discovered and find their people. This book details how an audience will find you once you put your work out there, while simultaneously getting really good at whatever it is you do. It encouraged me to be open about what I’m working on and to consistently post bits and pieces of my work, ideas, and what I’ve recently learned online.

My favorite takeaways were thinking about your work as a never-ending process that you can share with the world, how to build a name for yourself, and how to deal with the ups and downs of putting yourself out there for the whole world to see.

This is a short, little book that can be read in a few hours. I highly recommend it to any creatives, artists, and makers (something I believe we all are). This book was what inspired me to start sharing more of my work online and to start my website.

💡 Takeaways:

You don’t have to be a genius

Don’t be a genius, find a “scenius”: a group of creative individuals who share ideas and breed creativity/innovation. It doesn’t matter how smart or talented you are, what’s important is what you can contribute (ideas, quality connections, conversations, etc.). You really need to share your work online in this day and age, to find your “scenius”. Good work is not created in a vacuum, it’s created in a “scenius”.

Be an amateur. We all start out as amateurs who will try anything, take chances, experiment, and follow our whims. Sharing our work when we’re just starting out is incredibly helpful to those who are first starting out as well.

Think process, not product

When asked if he had any advice for students, journalist David Carr said, “No one is going to give a damn about your résumé; they want to see what you have made with your own little fingers.”

Take people behind the scenes and share your creative process, your learning journey, with them. Forget the end product, focus on your processes and the products will come naturally.

Share something small every day

Overnight success is a myth. Dig into almost every overnight success story and you’ll find about a decade’s worth of hard work and perseverance.

Document what you’ve done each day and share a small piece of your process, this shows people what you’re working on right now. Don’t worry about your post being perfect. A lot of things online are garbage (yes, even your stuff), but after you collect enough trash, one of them is bound to be a diamond in the rough.

Buy a domain name, start a blog, and claim your corner of the internet. Get a website that’s uniquely yours. Make that your home base for all things that interest you. Build a good name for yourself on this website, and keep your name clean. Focus on providing quality content, don’t worry about money, fame, etc. or you’ll never get it. If there’s one thing you take away from this book, it’s buy a domain name.

Open up your cabinet of curiosities

Share things you genuinely enjoy, and don’t be ashamed of that. Be original, be passionate, and you’ll connect with likeminded people who share similar interests. Your interests clue people in to the type of person you are, and what you want to do. You may also find new collaborators for future projects by sharing your work online.

Tell good stories

Your work tells a story, so learn to be an effective storyteller. Talk about your learning processes, what you learn, the mistakes you make, the projects you do, how you practice, and if you can share the final outcome of all your hard work. It doesn’t matter if your tale is finished or not, just talk about where you’ve been, where you are now, and where you’re going.

Always keep your audience in mind when telling your story. Value their time, speak directly and in plain terms.

Teach what you know

The minute you learn something new, turn around and teach it to others. You can share your book notes (like this!), or create a guide online, whatever it is, take people behind the scenes and show them your process.

When you teach people about what you know, you’re generating more interest and hype around that topic.

Don’t turn into human spam

Please, please, please don’t turn into “human spam“. These are people who want things right away, who don’t want to listen to other people’s ideas, who are obnoxious and self-absorbed. While you’re sharing your work, try and share others’ work as well, and of course, give people credit for ideas that are not yours.

Stop worrying about how many people follow you and start focusing on the quality of the people who follow you. Talk to people that excite you, talk about stuff that excites you, do what excites you. Try to drop anything, or anyone, that drains you.

Learn to take a punch

Putting your work out there for the whole world to see is scary. It makes you vulnerable, so you have to be ready for the good and the bad things people are going to say. The more popular you are, the more critics you’ll face.

The best way to prepare for this is to get hit a lot. Put out a lot of work, and spring back as quickly as possible from any negativity. If criticism is well deserved, learn from it and come back stronger than ever the second time around.

And of course, your worst hater is the one who lives inside your head. Please make your head a nice place to be, be kind to yourself and cultivate a growth mindset.

Sell out

For some reason there’s a stigma surrounding creativity and making money. Money does not inherently corrupt creativity Some of our most meaningful and most cherished cultural artifacts were made for money. As Walt Disney said, “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.”

Make the jump to start asking for money in return for your work only when you feel you’re putting out work that is actually worth something. Put a price on your work and your time.

Always be open to new ideas (be ambitious), but also learn to value your time just as much as your work. Learn to say “No” to opportunities that don’t contribute much to your work or that you don’t want to do. Save saying “Yes” for only the most meaningful opportunities.

Stick around

Just keep playing the game. Keep moving forward and find the next best thing to work on. It doesn’t matter if you’ve succeed or failed in the past, all that matters is what you’ll do now.

As yourself “What’s next?“. Don’t lose momentum, so try using the end of one project as inspiration for the next.

Take a sabbatical to refuel after burning out. Some of your best ideas can come to you during a sabbatical, and you can work on those ideas for years after.

Get rid of old material, but remember you never really start over. All the work you’ve done before and the lessons you’ve learned stick around even when you start over. Think of starting over as a new beginning.

🌟 Quotes I Like: