What I learned from Austin Kleon's "Show Your Work"
I read Austin K.'s Show Your Work and this article outlines the most important takeaways of mine.
This article was also published on Medium.
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First of all, I'd like to shout out to @chengweihu for recommending this book. This is exactly the kind of book that I need at the current stage, which I'll explain later. In this book, Austin Kleon gives some inspiring ideas to people passionate about what they're working on. And what's more important is that he offers a lot of doable methods that one can easily follow.
We've all seen those influencers making impacts on the world in their fields in their own ways. And we also realize how much effort it takes. A key insight that readers may find of this book is that it's actually not such a big deal building up what you've been focusing on and share it with the world. Of course, there are some tips you should pay attention to and it indeed is not going to be an easy path. But in the end, it's all about the mindset.
Actions you can take IMMEDIATELY and CONSTANTLY
In this book, Austin gave out TEN tips about sharing one's works. This opens up with the mindset and some concepts, follow by some DOs and DON'Ts actions that one could easily take, and ends up with what one should consider doing afterward.
Take one of the scenarios Austin gave as an example, we sometimes try to keep records of what we do, what we see, or what we learn and share them with the world. Instead of doing so directly, we normally try to structure them properly and make sure they're as perfect as they can be before launching them.
However, "being perfect" is not the main purpose why we share our works, not even one of them. Further, to look perfect takes huge amounts of effort. And no one can be "perfect". It's more about sharing the amazing ideas and processes, building up the connection with other people in related fields, and reaching out to more potential resources.
From this perspective, some actions we could take are:
Keep telling yourself that you don't have to be a genius to share your works.
Share something every day with any kind of method.
Run a "So what" test.
One of the best things about this book is that Austin suggests a lot of small actions that could be easily taken immediately. And he actually gives methods of how they could follow. After started my current work and side projects, I've always been thinking about sharing what I see, learn, and think. Sometimes I somehow manage to do it but more often they just laid in my brain and vanish rapidly.
How it works on me
So the first action that I took after reading this book is to buy my own domain and start putting my work on it. (Austin mentions that besides uploading contents to mainstream media platforms, one should also build his/her own website.) By doing so, I get to have a more flexible space to share my work.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I'm kind of at the stage that this book helps a lot. This brings up another example of mine. Recently I started a podcast project which invites people around the world to share their ideas about education topics. I've already made a few episodes but have not published them yet since I cared so much about other kinds of stuff such as how I'm sustaining the show or how I could promote it. What if the content is so bad that no one likes it?
Honestly, I still have no answers to the previous questions. But what I realized is that these issues only appear if I take action launching my project. The more I share, the more feedback I receive, and the better I could become, so I decided to publish the show anyway. The best part of it is that this motivates me to produce more content with higher productivity, knowing that there's nothing to worry about. It's not that these details are not important. But it doesn't really matter unless you START.
Other thoughts and conclusion
It often happens to me that when I talk with people about things I've been thinking or working on, more and more ideas just pop out so naturally through the conversation. What's even better, people give back feedbacks and opinions from different perspectives, and this makes me think wider and deeper.
But it'd have never happened if I didn't start this process.
Our civilization is built up by people sharing thoughts with others, interacting with those with different minds, or debating about their perfections. Thinkers think, but without showing what we're working on out, the world would never roll.