Have you ever come across a book for those who hate the idea of self-promotion? Well, this book will certainly challenge your preconceived opinion and give you the boost of starting to document your work online. What if showing whatever you are working on isn’t about self-promotion or bragging but just sharing what interests you. What if, in the process of Showing your work, you get clarity of your thoughts. The sole aim is to inspire. You will be surprised by the number of people who can genuinely find your story compelling. It is about documenting your progress. Making yourself findable.

A month ago, while tossing around the idea of starting a blog, I caught myself overthinking. Why should I put my thoughts online? I am not an expert on a particular subject., Why would anyone read what I have to say? What would my friend and family think? Sort of an imposter syndrome kicked in. Then I came across a video of Ali Abdaal on YouTube recommending a book called “Show Your Work” by Austin Kleon. I bought and read the book. THAT WAS A GAME-CHANGER!! Do you want to know why?

Here are a few lessons from the book 👇🏼:

1. You don’t have to be a genius

Yes, you don’t need to be an expert to start talking about something. You don’t have to be a genius to give your opinions. One destructive myth about creativity is that you need to work on something Special or be super smart to share your work. Nothing could be further from the truth. The more you do something, the better you get.  This chapter proposes to adopt an amateur mindset by reminding yourself, you’re not an expert nor a genius, but You’re just documenting your process and sharing what you are interested in. why? Because your perspective is unique and your experience matters.

To paraphrase Derek Silvers “What is Obvious to you can be amazing to others, don’t be afraid to share your opinions and take actions on your ideas”

You never know how some simple thoughts can positively impact someone far away. We should only focus on putting our works out there for the world to decide. We are sometimes bad judges of our creations said, Derek.

What’s holding you back to show your work?

2. Think Process, not Product

So many creators experience putting off work when focusing too much on the possible outcome. Our general tendency is to focus on the final product rather than the step-by-step process leading to the final product. Adopting the step-by-step mindset has personally helped me make significant progress on my blog. I remember writing my first blog post seemed daunting at first. Why? I would lie to myself, kevin, if you can spare 1 hour or so and sit down to write your piece, you can finish it in one go easy. Well, that never happened. I felt a little bit anxious every time I thought of tackling the project. The goal seemed too big, hence unrealistic. As you might have guessed, I caught myself in procrastination mode. A week later, I decided to change tactics. I started telling myself, kevin, if you can sit down and write 5 sentences of your blog post today, you can call it a day. I instantly didn’t feel the pressure anymore. I wrote 5 sentences the first day, 10 the next day, and I was surprised how I ended up with a full blog post a few days after. Yes, the Think process, not the product approach has been working for me since starting my blog and other side projects.  

Have you ever heard of the SHITTY first drafts? Ann Lamott did a good job in her book “Bird by Bird” deconstructing the misconception that successful authors have this divine ability to sit down one time and write a perfect piece. Well, let’s keep this for another Piece 😉😁…  

3. Share something small everyday

Kleon starts this chapter by suggesting that “overnight success is a myth”. When it comes to creativity, he Suggests sharing something small every day. He pointed out how so many creators ‘successful pieces just started with a simple tweet, comment, blog post, etc. The more you interact with the world, the more idea you get. As I think about it, one page a day is 365 pages in a year. One post a month is 30 posts a month. The compounding effect is factual. We should forget about Years, months and only focus on days. I like one nuance the author made differentiating sharing and oversharing. We should be opened to sharing our imperfect work we may want feedback on. This does not imply sharing absolutely everything. There is a significant difference between sharing and oversharing. We should be mindful that the internet is a copy machine. Once something is published, it becomes open to the public. While we want our work to spread worldwide, we should only share what we’re comfortable sharing.

“If you work on something a little bit every day, you end up with something that is massive.

Kenneth Goldsmith”.

4. Open up Your cabinet of your curiosities

As I was going through this chapter, I kept telling myself, Kev, this is one of the reasons why you started your blog in the first place. I saw in launching a blog a way to expand my readings and eventually broaden my knowledge. There are so many things out there I am eager to learn. 2 weeks prior to launching my blog, I kept questioning myself, what am I going to write about? Then I told myself What if you can simply open your cabinet of curiosities through various readings and the more you read, the more ideas you will have on what to write about.

Something I thought to be very profound is when Kleon suggested ” when you find things you genuinely enjoy, don’t let anyone else make you feel bad about it. Don’t feel guilty about the pleasure you take in the things you enjoy” celebrate them. Do you know why? Being open and honest about what you like is the best way to connect with people who like those things, too.

He ended this chapter with a piece of important advice. “While it is true that in these days and age of the Internet it is easy to copy and paste someone else’s work, it is utterly important to give credit where credit is due. If you share the work of others, it is important to make sure that the creators of that work get proper credit” 👌…

5. Tell Good Stories

Work doesn’t speak for itself. It is important to tell good stories around our Works. While this is true, I think it is one of those things any creators should not overly stress about, especially at the early stage. As with any other skills, the more we practice them, the better we get. Telling a good story can be as simple as giving a little bit of a context of how a particular story unfolded. Small details like telling compelling stories should not prevent creators from sharing their work.

Also, how will you know if your story is good or not? Considering that we are often bad judges of our works, it might be wise to let other people go over it. Indeed, everybody loves a good story even though it does not come naturally to some people. It is a skill that might take time to master. Your stories can only get better the more you tell them. 

Is the idea of telling good stories holding you back from sharing your work?

6. Teach what you know

“The impulse to keep to yourself What you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes” Annie Dillard.

From time to time, it is always great to share with others what you have learned. We have all heard the common saying: we tend to learn best when teaching others. Teaching others can only be valuable from that perspective. At the end of the day, what’s the point of keeping for ourselves something we have learned? Is knowledge valuable when hoarded?

Kleon encourages us to think about what we can share from our process that would inform the people we’re trying to reach. have you learned a craft? What are some of your techniques? Are you skilled at using Certain tools and materials? What kind of knowledge comes along with your job? What we ignore sometimes is that when we teach someone about, what we do, we are in effect, generating more interest in our work. People tend to feel closer to our work because we’re letting them in.

7. Don’t turn into Human Spam

As most writer knows, if you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader first. The world does not only revolve around us. We need to be willing to learn about other people’s work too. Kleon points out there are people in every profession who don’t want to pay their dues, they want their pieces right now as if the world owes them something. They don’t want to listen to your ideas, they want to tell you theirs. They don’t want to come to your shows, but they want you to come to theirs. He calls those people “human Spam”. We should not turn into human spam.

“If you want fans, you have to be a fan first. If you want to be accepted by a community, you have to first be a good citizen of that community. If you’re only pointing to your own stuff online, you are doing it wrong. You have to be an open node, if you want to get, you have to give etc.” Kleon.

8. Learn to take the punch

Like all boxers know, learning to take the punch is crucial. Sometimes they have it to deflect the punch, push or maybe tilt. The same logic might come in handy when putting your work out there on the “so-called INTERNET“. When putting your work out into the world, you have to be ready for criticism, sometimes constructive. 

Here is how to take punches 👀:

• Relax and breathe: A bad criticism is not the end of the word. No one has ever died from a bad review. 🤷🏼‍♂️
• Strengthen your neck: The best way to be able to take a punch is to practice getting hit a lot (Haha, I burst out laughing while reading this 😂). Put out a lot of work, let people take their best shot at it. The more criticism you take, the more you realize it can’t hurt you. 
• Roll with the punches: keep moving. Every piece of constructive criticism can be an opportunity for new work. While it is true that you can’t control what sort of criticism you receive, from what I know, you can at least control how you react to it. Well, maybe having your work hated by certain people can be a badge of honor (LOL) 😜….  
• Protect your vulnerable areas: You don’t have to share what you think is personal or sensitive. 
• Keep your balance: 
• Don’t feed the trolls: Trolls are those people not interested in helping you improve your work; their sole goal is to provoke with hateful comments. Don’t feed them, they’ll go away. 🏃🏃🏼‍♂️🏃🏼‍♂️ 

9. Sell Out

Everybody says they want artists to make money but when they do, everybody hates them for it. Don’t be jealous when the people you like do well, celebrate their victory as if it’s your own. It comes to the point where down the road you might start monetizing your work. Don’t feel bad about it. When an audience starts gathering for the work that you’re freely putting into the world, you might eventually want to take the leap of turning them into patrons. For instance: you may put a little virtual tip jar or a donate now button on your website. The author suggests keeping a mailing list as well. It is a better way to keep in touch with people who come across your work and want to stay in touch.

“Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky”

Michael Lewis

10. Stick Around

Yes, the people who get what they’re after are often the ones who stick around long enough. It is important to don’t quit. Life is certainly full of ups and downs, some have their careers, families to take care of, etc. but those who manage to stick around the longest often reap the greater benefit.

He mentioned David Chappelle was once asked to come to a high school and give some advice to the kids, he said” I guess, whatever you do, don’t quit your show, he said. “Life is very hard without a show, kids”. You never know where a big opportunity will present itself. In whatever you do, just stick around, get better, trust the process.

“Every day, without hope or despair, “You can’t count on success, you can only leave open the possibility for it, and be ready to jump on and take the ride when it comes for you” Isak Dinesen

Isak Dinesen

BON, SIKOYO, NAKE NA NGAYI…😀🖐🏼, until my next post!!