Show Your Work (Austin Kleon) - Book notes and key lessons

Book Review

📌 The book, in a few words

To build anything tangible on the internet, we need to become comfortable with taking people behind the scenes and making them a part of our progress journey.

The internet allows you to reinvent yourself - you can do this via a website, sharing one thing each day and talking about the things that influence you (what do you read? what do you subscribe to? where do you get inspiration? etc.)

Teach what you know because when you share your knowledge and work with others, you receive an education.

🔍 Key Lesson Learned:

The book gave me a fresh perspective on why building in public is important. Rather than share the finished product with the public, people are more interested in the process and the journey to making that finished product. By doing this, we connect with our audience on a deeper level.

👀 Who should read it:

I’d say it’s a great book for creatives, anyone in the creative industry - content creators, artists, writers etc

☘️ How the book changed me:

It helped me realise that I should think of “process and not just product” and gave me the nudge to start sharing more of my work and life in public. An example is this dispatch newsletter which you are currently reading.

It reestablished that criticism comes with sharing online, and while I cannot control the sort of criticism I receive, I can control how I react to it. And having my work hated by certain people is actually a badge of honour.

I learnt to share something each day, not just a post of the food I’m eating or gym selfies (guilty!🙈), but to share one thing I’m working on each day.

✍🏽 My Top 4 Quotes

Don’t be afraid to charge for your work, but put a price on it that you think is fair.

The internet is a copy machine, post as though everyone who reads it has the power to fire you.

Stop worrying about how many people follow you online and start worrying about the quality of people who follow you.

Don’t be jealous when the people you like do well - celebrate their victory as if it’s your own.