Don’t self-promote — share your progress (and 5 key insights)

Switching your mindset from the idea of self promotion to simply sharing your progress, experience and work helps a lot in actually putting yourself out there. It will defeat the “perfectionist” that thinks that whatever you did isn’t really good enough to show off. Instead, you can proudly share imperfect work as work-in-progress and, through that, publish more, make more connections, get input from outside and also become better faster.

That’s my three sentence summary for Austin Kleon’s “Show your Work!”. But, of course, there’s more to be learned from this book.

Key Takeaways

1. Focus on sharing your journey, not your result

Learning in front of others forces you to properly think things through and understand them enough to explain them again. It also gives others the opportunity to correct you when you’re wrong, share insights that might help you learn faster and give you new ideas on how to use this new knowledge.

And the sooner you start sharing, the quicker you’ll find people to grow with.

2. Sharing will create contacts; Contacts will create opportunities

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. That’s an often repeated phrase, but how do you get to know the right people? Unless your friends and family already are the right connection, you’ll likely meet them while working.

Sharing your thoughts, progress and work will inevitably attract other like-minded people. Then you can exchange ideas and learn from each other.

The creative process is rarely a lonely one. Others will influence you and you’ll influence others.

3. Being an amateur has its advantages

Often people don’t think that what they know is worth putting out there — after all it’s mostly just an amalgamation of things they read or heard. But simply investing time to think about something will make you realize things that others don’t. And that’s valuable.

What’s also valuable is the mistakes that you make while learning. Once you become a master in something you’ve likely already forgotten the mistakes, pitfalls and misunderstandings from when you just started. But remembering them will likely make you a better teacher for other beginners.

Whenever you choose to wait before sharing, you rob others of the mistakes you’ll forget.

Additionally, amateurs are often less afraid to try new things and, in the process, will often make new discoveries.

4. You’re going to die someday

Okay, that’s pretty dark. But this knowledge should also motivate us. There’s no reason not to try something we want to try. That doesn’t mean you should just go ahead and become reckless — you still need to think about the future, but if there is no risk to your long-term happiness, then just try it. People regret not doing things more than they regret having done stuff.

Post as though everyone who can read it has the power to fire you ~ Lauren Cerand

5. Don’t be afraid to be embarrassed

Everyone is embarrassed about something they did in the past. But this is good. It shows that we’ve grown as people. And it will also stop us from making the same mistakes again.

Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough ~ Alain de Botton

This book is for you if…

you think about publishing (or showing off) your creative work, but have qualms about it. Even if you don’t, the book might still help you, albeit likely less so.

The book is not valuable for you if you…

• have no problem advertising your work and enough content you want to publish or
• are not interested in publishing work at all.