Author overview:
Austin Kleon, the guy who wrote “Show Your Work!”, lives in Austin, Texas. He’s a writer and artist who talks a lot about being creative and showing your work to people. He wrote another popular book called “Steal Like an Artist,” which is all about how to be more creative.
Basically, Kleon thinks it’s super important to share what you create with others because it helps you get better and connect with people.
Do what you love.
You may get bad feelings that people are not going to appreciate your work, but that’s not true. If you do what you love, it builds authenticity and honesty.
Don’t follow the crowd. You know, when I searched the famous keyword, the ranked keyword, I also got demotivated that people were not going to like my work because every YouTube video shows that the finance keyword will be the best niche for good revenue and to be ranked.
But that’s not how things work because this is not the field I have experienced in. So, if you just follow the crowd just because it’s a good topic, you will not go far longer. If you have to do the work for longer and be happy about it, just do what you love and what things you have experienced.
Do not try to be someone you are not; your audience will gonna appreciate you for who you are.
Read more to write more:
If you love to write and want to write, so read more. That’s how you will feed your mind with good works. Don’t think that you know everything because if you read, you get to know how other people are writing it. You get to know the idea of writing more with creativity.
By reading, you will get to know other people’s mind perspectives, and it will only gonna help you to become a more great writer.
Show your process:
This is the thing you can start with your Internet journey, your sharing journey because you might think that you are not good at something.
Still, you can share your life, how your normal life is, how you are living it, and document your life. If you are a student, you can show people the time you are going to college, the things you are carrying in your bag, the things you are eating, and the books you are reading as a student. If you got good marks, you can share your methods, and how you have got good marks.
Just document your life, do not fall into a place that you have nothing to show.
Share something every day:
Have you seen influencers right now trending on reels where they share things by tagging day one, day 2, and day 3? They have made a 365-day project where they share every day. I love this thing personally, and these things I think help you be more creative in daily work because you know now that you have to share something every day.
So you do work that is shareable to everyone, and that’s how you will make every day a meaningful day by sharing even one thing important in your daily life.
Maybe you learn one thing from others, maybe you have seen a video where you learn something great you didn’t know before.
Share anything, just share every day, and that’s how you can make your every day meaningful.
Keep learning:
The best way to keep learning is to be curious. If you are curious about new things, if you are curious about every day of your life, then you will not hesitate about failing, about being rejected because you are curious about new things.
So you don’t fall into the past, into your failed rejections. Just be curious and be a learner.
You might fail at 10 things, but if you are curious, you might learn 20 new things.
Don’t crave for more followers:
You might think that having more followers is what success is about, but that’s not true.
Having 1000 genuine followers is better than having 10k followers who are not interested in your work. Build a great connection with your real followers. Having real people with you is a great way to build deep connections, who trust you, and support you, so go for building genuine and real followers.
Accept that not everyone will love you:
In the world of the internet world, people have a right to say anything if they don’t like your work, but it’s okay. Sometimes you don’t like others’ work, even if you think that you are not criticizing others, so you also don’t deserve to be criticized, so it’s wrong.
That’s not how the world works. If you don’t like negative comments you have an option to disable your comments, and even you can block users. Just do not let their negative comments sad you, do not get distracted by the negative or bad comments.
Accept it gracefully; maybe someone saying the right things, and you can improve by listening to them if comments are really a suggestion to improve.
Give credit.
Do not fall into the trap of thinking that if you give credit people will think you are not original.
This is the thinking I had before, but after reading this book, I changed my mindset. If you give credit, then it shows that you have done research, again you are building a connection of honesty.
Do whatever it takes to build deep connections, and be real.
Be creative:
You can only be creative if you are happy and have a clear mind. With a depressing mind, you can’t create good stuff. So, read great books, watch good videos that can uplift you, and hang around with good people.
Even if you read 100 good books, if you have a toxic circle, then these good books can’t help you.
Choose people wisely and be aware of whom you are surrounding yourself with.
Do not feel shame:
If you believe you are doing great work and it will be helpful to people, then sell it. There will be people who are happy to buy things from you if they find it helpful. Just make helpful content.
Thank you!
