Show Your Work Summary

Show Your Work talks about the importance of the internet, and how one can showcase work in the right way, so people can take advantage of your knowledge and at the same time, you can make living out of it.

We’re living in a tech world, there is lots of competition, and sometimes, we think, how can I stand apart from the crowd and this is where Austin Kleon will teach you how you can be different from the crowd.

Quotes

“The trouble with imaginative people is that we’re good at picturing the worst that could happen to us. Fear is often just the imagination taking a wrong turn.”

“Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you’ll attract people who love that kind of stuff. It’s that simple.”

Life’s Last Edit by Rahul Makwana

Think of it as a self-help bible—not just a collection of lessons, but a guide to transforming your life.

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Contents

Who Should Read it?

Everyone who wants to start something on the internet whether it’s a Website, YouTube, or selling something on an e-commerce website, the Show Your Work Book will give you an idea about how you can start from the bottom to the top.

You don’t have to be perfect to start something, you just have to start and during the journey, you will learn lots of things.

So leave your fear and thoughts aside and start that one thing that you always wanted to start.

Austin Kleon has shared 10 ways to showcase work. The book has only 130 pages, so it won’t take more than two hours to finish it and between you will get a clear idea, of how big the internet is and how you can use it.

You don’t have to be a genius
Think process, not product
Share something small every day
Open up your cabinet of curiosities
Tell good stories
Teach what you know
Don’t turn into human spam
Learn to take a punch
Sell out
Stick around

Imagine if your next boss didn’t have to read your resume because he already reads your blog. Imagine being a student and getting your first gig based on a school project you posted online.

Imagine losing your job but having a social network of people familiar with your work and ready to help you find a new one. Imagine turning a side project or a hobby into your profession because you had a following that could support you

Or imagine something simpler and just as satisfying: spending the majority of your time, energy, and attention practicing a craft, learning a trade, or running a business, while also allowing for the possibility that your work might attract a group of people who share your interests.

All you have to do is show your work.

Overnight success is a myth

Overnight success is a myth. Dig into almost every overnight success story and you’ll find about a decade’s worth of hard work and perseverance.

Building a substantial body of work takes a long time but thankfully, you don’t need that time all in one big chunk. So forget about decades, forget about years, and forget about months. Focus on days.

The day is the only unit of time that I can really get my head around. Seasons change, and weeks are completely human-made, but the day has a rhythm. The sun goes up; the sun goes down. I can handle that.

Document Your Life

Once a day, after you’ve done your day’s work, go back to your documentation and find one little piece of your process that you can share. Where you are in your process will determine what that piece is.

If you’re in the very early stages, share your influences and what’s inspiring you. If you’re in the middle of executing a project, write about your methods or share works in progress.

If you’ve just completed a project, show the final product, share scraps from the cutting-room floor, or write about what you learned. If you have lots of projects out into the world, you can report on how they’re doing—you can tell stories about how people are interacting with your work.

Things Don’t have to be Perfect

Don’t worry about everything you post. Science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon once said that 90 percent of everything is crap. The same is true of our own work.

The trouble is, we don’t always know what’s good and what sucks. That’s why it’s important to get things in front of others and see how they react. “Sometimes you don’t always know what you’ve got,” says artist Wayne White. “It really does need a little social chemistry to make it show itself to you sometimes.”

“One day at a time. It sounds so simple. It actually is simple but it isn’t easy: It requires incredible support and fastidious structuring.“– Russell Brand

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. We’re all busy, but we all get 24 hours a day. People often ask me, “How do you find the time for all this?” And I answer, “I look for it.”

Don’t Quit Your Show

Every career is full of ups and downs, and just like stories, when you’re in the middle of living out your life and career, you don’t know whether you’re up or down or what’s about to happen next. “If you want a happy ending,” actor Orson Welles wrote, “that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”

It’s very important not to quit prematurely.

The comedian Dave Chappelle was doing a stand-up gig in Dallas not long ago and he started joking about walking away from his lucrative deal with Comedy Central for his program, Chappelle’s Show.

He said he was asked to come to a high school class and give some advice. “I guess, whatever you do, don’t quit your show,” he said. “Life is very hard without a show, kids.

You can’t plan on everything; you can only go about your work, as Isak Dinesen wrote, “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.

You may have heard in many self-help books that, if you believe in something whether it’s your work or anything else, do it no matter what, the day will come when you look back to those days when you were thinking of quitting.

About This Website

I didn’t start BookiesTalk.com to earn money, I started because I wanted to share my thought with the world.

I choose to talk about books and the things I learned from them.

The day will come when I will get some amount of money from this website but I won’t use that money to please myself, I have promised myself, that whatever I earn from this website, I will give back whether it will be in form of books or anything else.

I try to write every day but again, I have other websites too where I earn money to live a comfortable life.

What I’m saying is or what Austin Kleon has said…

If you have enough to live comfortable life then give the extra to other people and I do believe that you don’t need expensive clothes or products to live life.

That doesn’t mean, I don’t buy things, I do but that too in limit.

Show Your Work Review

The Show Your Work by Austin Kleon was published on 6 March 2014 and back then the book was relevant but now I feel, you can get everything for free on the internet if you find it properly.

Talking about myself, I didn’t learn anything new from this book because I had read tons of books and watched videos about how I can take advantage of the internet and that’s what I’m doing in this movement.

Now, if you’re that person, who don’t know how to use social media in a good way or wanted to make living out of it then the Show Your Work book will help you a lot.

Still, if you have any questions then feel free to comment, I would love to chat with you.

Happy Reading…

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