Title Show Your Work

Author Austin Kleon

Year Published 2014

Kind of Book Creative Process/How to

How strongly I recommend it 8/10 

My Impressions This book makes a strong case for sharing your work/art/ideas with the world and gives you plenty of ways to do so. It is largely a scrapbook of famous artist's ideas assembled into 10 lessons for the modern artist. Sharing your work is a powerful idea and this book is part of the reason I made these book notes available to the public.

Date Read April 2019

Practical Takeaways

  • Stop asking "what can others do for me?" and start asking "what can I do for others?"

  • Be an Amateur

  • Do it wrong

  • "Think about what you want to learn and make a commitment to learning it in front of others."

  • "Put yourself, and your work, out there every day" (you'll start meeting some amazing people.)

  • Show your work. Not your latte or lunch.

  • Post as though everyone who can read it has the power to fire you

  • If you're unsure about whether or not to post something, let it sit for 24hrs. The next day, take it out and look at it with fresh eyes. Ask yourself, "is this helpful? Is it entertaining?"

  • Start a Blog

  • "Make people better at something they want to be better at"

  • Share things that influence you. Credit them properly. Credit people who turned you onto things.

  • Include a link in your online posts (no one is going to look it up on their own)

  • Rehearse your response to the question "what do you do"

  • Like other people's social media posts

  • Follow people on IG

  • Collect people's emails

  • "Whatever excites you, go do it. Whatever drains you, stop doing it."-Derek Sivers

  • If after you hang out with someone you feel energized keep them in your life. If after hanging out with someone you feel depleted, remove them from your life

  • Expect criticism the more people come across your work

  • Delete nasty comments

  • Consider turning off comments

  • Let people contact you directly or let them copy your work over to their own spaces and talk about it all they want.

  • Credit people when you use their work or if you are sharing their recommendations

  • Make sure your work is online

  • Show your fans how the sausage is made

  • Keep your resume short and sweet. 2 sentence explanation. Get rid of all adjectives. Don't brag. Don't be cute. Just state the facts

  • Make things. Show people what you've made, not your resume

  • Have a short prepared response for when people say "what do you do"

  • Consider turning off comments Natalie Dee

  • Make sure people giving you criticism are trying to help you, not hurt you.

  • Delete nasty comments

Big Ideas

  • The more people that come across your work. The more criticism you'll face

  • No one has ever died from a bad review

  • In the 21st century if your work isn't online than it doesn't exist

  • People want to see the behind the scenes process of how someone did what they did

  • In the 21st century people don't care about your resume, they care about what you have made