Show Your Work!: Difference between revisions
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📅 '''3 – Share something small every day.''' End each day by picking one tiny, useful fragment to post: a line from your notebook, a photo of a step, a diagram, a link that shaped your thinking. Early on, share influences; in the messy middle, show methods and rough cuts; after release, share outtakes and what you learned. Keep a lightweight routine—a daily “dispatch” that takes minutes, not hours—and apply a simple “so what?” test to avoid noise and oversharing. Over weeks, this stream becomes a searchable archive of breadcrumbs that lets others see your trajectory. The book links this rhythm to Robin Sloan’s “stock and flow”: your daily stream (flow) accumulates into durable pieces (stock) you can refine into articles, talks, or products. The psychology is anti‑perfection: small units lower friction, encourage practice, and invite steady feedback; the economics is compounding attention, where many tiny touchpoints build familiarity and trust. Done consistently, you convert incremental progress into a visible body of work and an audience that grows with you. ''Once a day, after you’ve done your day’s work, find one little piece of your process that you can share.'' |
📅 '''3 – Share something small every day.''' End each day by picking one tiny, useful fragment to post: a line from your notebook, a photo of a step, a diagram, a link that shaped your thinking. Early on, share influences; in the messy middle, show methods and rough cuts; after release, share outtakes and what you learned. Keep a lightweight routine—a daily “dispatch” that takes minutes, not hours—and apply a simple “so what?” test to avoid noise and oversharing. Over weeks, this stream becomes a searchable archive of breadcrumbs that lets others see your trajectory. The book links this rhythm to Robin Sloan’s “stock and flow”: your daily stream (flow) accumulates into durable pieces (stock) you can refine into articles, talks, or products. The psychology is anti‑perfection: small units lower friction, encourage practice, and invite steady feedback; the economics is compounding attention, where many tiny touchpoints build familiarity and trust. Done consistently, you convert incremental progress into a visible body of work and an audience that grows with you. ''Once a day, after you’ve done your day’s work, find one little piece of your process that you can share.'' |
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🗃️ '''4 – Open up your cabinet of curiosities.''' Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s habit of keeping handwritten notebooks and a personal “cabinet of curiosities” models how a creator curates inputs—sketches, clippings, and odd objects—to feed future work. The chapter treats a studio as an archive in progress, with shelves, folders, and bookmarks that make influences visible and retrievable. Instead of hoarding taste, it urges sharing sources: books you underline, reference images you pin, tools you rely on, and the makers who shaped your choices. Proper attribution is non‑negotiable; link back, name names, and pass along context so others can trace the lineage. There’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure—if it sparks you, log it and admit it—because honesty about influence helps others map their own. The practical system is simple: keep a commonplace book or digital scrap file, tag everything, and publish a periodic selection with credits. Over time, your public collection becomes a signal of taste that attracts like‑minded collaborators and teaches newcomers how to look. The central move is to open your research cabinet so people can see the ecosystem behind your work and discover adjacent makers. The mechanism is editorial curation and social proof: consistently crediting and sharing influences builds trust, strengthens networks, and makes your own output more legible. |
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🗃️ '''4 – Open up your cabinet of curiosities.''' |
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📖 '''5 – Tell good stories.''' Kurt Vonnegut’s chalkboard “shapes of stories” diagram—rising and falling arcs that trace fortune over time—shows why raw facts need narrative form before anyone can care. Using that lens, the chapter turns process into plot by framing what you share as a sequence: before and after, obstacle and turning point, mistake and fix. It swaps art‑speak for plain talk, advising concrete nouns and active verbs over abstract adjectives. A simple press‑release outline—what it is, who it’s for, why it matters now—keeps you from rambling, while photos and captions anchor the words in evidence. Parties and Q&As become practice grounds: answer directly, avoid hedging, and tell the truth about constraints and trade‑offs. Good stories also include stakes; explain what hung in the balance so progress feels earned rather than inevitable. By narrating decisions and dead ends, you give audiences a reason to root for the next chapter. The essential move is to pair the work with a human‑scaled narrative that explains origin, struggle, and meaning. The mechanism is coherence and identification: a clear arc reduces cognitive load and invites empathy, which in turn deepens attention and perceived value. |
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📖 '''5 – Tell good stories.''' |
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🧑🏫 '''6 – Teach what you know.''' A compact studio workshop offers the template: write the steps on a whiteboard, demonstrate once at real speed, again slowly with commentary, then hand out a short checklist so people can try it themselves. The chapter treats tutorials, recipes, and annotated screenshots as generous artifacts that travel farther than mere self‑promotion. It cites the enduring truth behind cookbooks and open‑source READMEs: giving away methods doesn’t exhaust your advantage, it expands the circle of people who understand your craft. Break complex techniques into small lessons, start with tool basics, and point to further reading so motivated learners can keep going. Keep boundaries—share know‑how, not private data or unsafe details—and always credit where a method came from. Teaching in public sharpens your thinking; questions reveal gaps, and your own explanations become a reusable reference. As a library of lessons grows, it doubles as proof of work and a path for newcomers to join the scene. The key move is to turn personal expertise into public instruction that others can apply immediately. The mechanism is reciprocity and compounding attention: useful teaching earns goodwill and steady feedback, which attracts the very audience that sustains future work. |
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🧑🏫 '''6 – Teach what you know.''' |
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🚫 '''7 – Don’t turn into human spam.''' |
🚫 '''7 – Don’t turn into human spam.''' |
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Revision as of 13:40, 8 November 2025
"Once a day, after you’ve done your day’s work, find one little piece of your process that you can share."
— Austin Kleon, Show Your Work! (2014)
Introduction
| Show Your Work! | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Full title | Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered |
| Author | Austin Kleon |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Creativity; Self-promotion; Personal development; Marketing |
| Genre | Nonfiction; Self-help |
| Publisher | Workman Publishing Company |
Publication date | 6 March 2014 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (paperback); e-book; audiobook |
| Pages | 224 |
| ISBN | 978-0-7611-7897-2 |
| Goodreads rating | 4.1/5 (as of 8 November 2025) |
| Website | workman.com |
Introduction
Show Your Work! is a compact, illustrated guide to sharing creative work as an open process, laying out ten short chapters that range from “Share something small every day” to “Stick around.” [1] Published by Workman on 6 March 2014 in trade paperback (224 pages), it argues that “generosity trumps genius” and mixes quotes, stories, and examples with Kleon’s drawings. [1] The book frames audience-building as joining a collaborative “scenius” and teaches readers to document process, give credit, and avoid becoming “human spam” online. [2] Positioned as the follow-up to Steal Like an Artist and pitched as “a book for people who hate the very idea of self-promotion,” it offers ten ways to be findable without the hard sell. [3] Contemporary coverage and trade reviews were positive—Publishers Weekly called it “sassy and spot-on” with a “pocket-sized” design, Fast Company highlighted its “self-promote without being a jerkface” ethos—and the author lists it as a New York Times bestseller. [2][4][5]
Chapter summary
This outline follows the Workman paperback edition (2014; ISBN 978-0-7611-7897-2).[1]
🤝 1 – You don’t have to be a genius. Musician Brian Eno’s term “scenius” counters the lone‑genius myth by placing creativity inside a supportive scene of people who trade ideas, copy, remix, and push one another. In this view, the most durable breakthroughs emerge from an “ecology of talent” made up of artists, curators, thinkers, and attentive fans who share what they know and build on what they find. The chapter invites joining such a scene by contributing work-in-progress, crediting influences, and being a good citizen who notices and supports others. It reframes the amateur as the enthusiast who learns in public and helps peers by sharing useful finds and hard-won lessons. Treating influence as a network rather than a pedestal lowers the stakes: you can start before you feel “ready,” let feedback shape your next step, and let generosity make you visible. Viewed this way, audience-building becomes community service rather than self‑promotion. The psychological shift—away from exceptionalism and toward participation—reduces perfectionism and fear while increasing reciprocity. Networks then supply the mechanism: repeated helpful contributions earn attention, trust, and opportunities that no one could manufacture alone. Being a valuable part of a scenius is not necessarily about how smart or talented you are, but about what you have to contribute—the ideas you share, the quality of the connections you make, and the conversations you start.
⚙️ 2 – Think process, not product. Picture a workbench or a screen filled with dated notes, rough sketches, step‑by‑step photos, and short clips—evidence of how something is made. Instead of hiding this messy middle, keep a simple work log, snap progress shots with your phone, and save small artifacts that show decisions and dead ends. Show your tools, drafts, and methods so people can follow along and understand how the result came to be. Treat this as documentation, not performance: share what’s helpful, keep boundaries, and give credit when you borrow techniques. The aim is connection through transparency, not spectacle. Process sharing supplies narrative and proof‑of‑work; it humanizes the maker and turns passive viewers into participants who root for the finish. That dynamic is the mechanism: visibility of effort creates identification and trust, which compounds into ongoing engagement that later carries the finished piece. But human beings are interested in other human beings and what other human beings do.
📅 3 – Share something small every day. End each day by picking one tiny, useful fragment to post: a line from your notebook, a photo of a step, a diagram, a link that shaped your thinking. Early on, share influences; in the messy middle, show methods and rough cuts; after release, share outtakes and what you learned. Keep a lightweight routine—a daily “dispatch” that takes minutes, not hours—and apply a simple “so what?” test to avoid noise and oversharing. Over weeks, this stream becomes a searchable archive of breadcrumbs that lets others see your trajectory. The book links this rhythm to Robin Sloan’s “stock and flow”: your daily stream (flow) accumulates into durable pieces (stock) you can refine into articles, talks, or products. The psychology is anti‑perfection: small units lower friction, encourage practice, and invite steady feedback; the economics is compounding attention, where many tiny touchpoints build familiarity and trust. Done consistently, you convert incremental progress into a visible body of work and an audience that grows with you. Once a day, after you’ve done your day’s work, find one little piece of your process that you can share.
🗃️ 4 – Open up your cabinet of curiosities. Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s habit of keeping handwritten notebooks and a personal “cabinet of curiosities” models how a creator curates inputs—sketches, clippings, and odd objects—to feed future work. The chapter treats a studio as an archive in progress, with shelves, folders, and bookmarks that make influences visible and retrievable. Instead of hoarding taste, it urges sharing sources: books you underline, reference images you pin, tools you rely on, and the makers who shaped your choices. Proper attribution is non‑negotiable; link back, name names, and pass along context so others can trace the lineage. There’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure—if it sparks you, log it and admit it—because honesty about influence helps others map their own. The practical system is simple: keep a commonplace book or digital scrap file, tag everything, and publish a periodic selection with credits. Over time, your public collection becomes a signal of taste that attracts like‑minded collaborators and teaches newcomers how to look. The central move is to open your research cabinet so people can see the ecosystem behind your work and discover adjacent makers. The mechanism is editorial curation and social proof: consistently crediting and sharing influences builds trust, strengthens networks, and makes your own output more legible.
📖 5 – Tell good stories. Kurt Vonnegut’s chalkboard “shapes of stories” diagram—rising and falling arcs that trace fortune over time—shows why raw facts need narrative form before anyone can care. Using that lens, the chapter turns process into plot by framing what you share as a sequence: before and after, obstacle and turning point, mistake and fix. It swaps art‑speak for plain talk, advising concrete nouns and active verbs over abstract adjectives. A simple press‑release outline—what it is, who it’s for, why it matters now—keeps you from rambling, while photos and captions anchor the words in evidence. Parties and Q&As become practice grounds: answer directly, avoid hedging, and tell the truth about constraints and trade‑offs. Good stories also include stakes; explain what hung in the balance so progress feels earned rather than inevitable. By narrating decisions and dead ends, you give audiences a reason to root for the next chapter. The essential move is to pair the work with a human‑scaled narrative that explains origin, struggle, and meaning. The mechanism is coherence and identification: a clear arc reduces cognitive load and invites empathy, which in turn deepens attention and perceived value.
🧑🏫 6 – Teach what you know. A compact studio workshop offers the template: write the steps on a whiteboard, demonstrate once at real speed, again slowly with commentary, then hand out a short checklist so people can try it themselves. The chapter treats tutorials, recipes, and annotated screenshots as generous artifacts that travel farther than mere self‑promotion. It cites the enduring truth behind cookbooks and open‑source READMEs: giving away methods doesn’t exhaust your advantage, it expands the circle of people who understand your craft. Break complex techniques into small lessons, start with tool basics, and point to further reading so motivated learners can keep going. Keep boundaries—share know‑how, not private data or unsafe details—and always credit where a method came from. Teaching in public sharpens your thinking; questions reveal gaps, and your own explanations become a reusable reference. As a library of lessons grows, it doubles as proof of work and a path for newcomers to join the scene. The key move is to turn personal expertise into public instruction that others can apply immediately. The mechanism is reciprocity and compounding attention: useful teaching earns goodwill and steady feedback, which attracts the very audience that sustains future work.
🚫 7 – Don’t turn into human spam.
🥊 8 – Learn to take a punch.
💸 9 – Sell out.
⏳ 10 – Stick around.
Background & reception
🖋️ Author & writing. Kleon—“a writer who draws”—developed Show Your Work! as the follow-up to Steal Like an Artist, pitching it specifically to readers who dislike self-promotion. [3] He presents ten rules for making process visible and building an audience through generosity and transparency. [3] Publishers Weekly described the volume as a “creatively designed pocket-sized book,” urging readers to join a “scenius,” share small, frequent updates, and avoid “human spam.” [2] The publisher characterizes the approach as “generosity trumps genius” and notes that the book is filled with illustrations, quotes, stories, and examples, giving it a conversational, visual voice across one-idea chapters. [1]
📈 Commercial reception. Workman lists the title on sale on 6 March 2014 in trade paperback at 224 pages (ISBN 978-0-7611-7897-2), and WorldCat catalogs the 2014 Workman edition. [1][6] Kleon’s site describes the book as a New York Times bestseller. [5] The publisher also situates it within a trilogy whose combined sales exceed one million copies and translations span dozens of languages. [1] Mainstream business media covered the launch and method in March 2014. [4]
👍 Praise. Publishers Weekly called the book “an incredibly useful and compulsively readable short book” and summed up its advice as “sassy and spot-on.” [2] School Library Journal judged it “valuable” for young people seriously pursuing creative fields. [7] Fast Company highlighted its “How to self-promote without being a jerkface” framing and interviewed Kleon about sharing process and setting boundaries. [4]
👎 Criticism. School Library Journal noted that the follow-up “has less to offer teens than Steal Like an Artist” and found the tone “a bit strident” in parts. [7] Marketing scholars have cautioned that building a brand on social platforms is a “vexing challenge,” complicating assumptions that daily posting alone will create reach. [8] More recent guidance urges values-driven personal branding rather than constant broadcasting, a nuance not foregrounded in Kleon’s brief rules. [9] Cultural commentary has also flagged a backlash against online oversharing and the need for clearer boundaries, suggesting readers apply the book’s “share every day” advice with discretion. [10]
🌍 Impact & adoption. The book appears on university reading lists for creative-practice courses—for example, San José State University’s PHOT 197 (Fall 2020). [11] It is also listed in Tompkins Cortland Community College’s ART 109 (2024–25) and in College of the Desert’s DDP 195 (Fall 2021), which cites the Workman ISBN. [12][13] Media coverage at launch further amplified its “share your process” ideas beyond art schools into broader creative and business communities. [4]
Related content & more
YouTube videos
CapSach articles
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedWorkmanPB - ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered". Publishers Weekly. 13 January 2014. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "10 Ways To Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered". Austin Kleon. 19 February 2014. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Grose, Jessica (17 March 2014). "The Art Of Self-Promotion: 6 Tips For Getting Your Work Discovered". Fast Company. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Show Your Work!". Austin Kleon. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ "Show your work! : 10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered". WorldCat. OCLC. 2014. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Carstensen, Angela (28 March 2014). "Show Your Work!". School Library Journal. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ Holt, Douglas (March 2016). "Branding in the Age of Social Media". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ Avery, Jill; Rachel Greenwald (May–June 2023). "A New Approach to Building Your Personal Brand". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ Waters, Michael (2 November 2022). "The Decline of Etiquette and the Rise of 'Boundaries'". The Atlantic. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ "Senior Photography Project, PHOT 197 (Fall 2020)" (PDF). San José State University. 2020. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ "ART 109 Syllabus (2024–25)" (PDF). Tompkins Cortland Community College. 2024. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ "DDP 195: Business Practices and Portfolio Preparation for Creatives (Fall 2021)" (PDF). College of the Desert. 2021. Retrieved 8 November 2025.