Show Your Work!
Austin Kleon · 2014
Show Your Work! (2014) is a book by Austin Kleon on career & skills. Ten practical principles for getting discovered by sharing your creative process instead of hiding it. Kleon reframes self-promotion as generosity: document what you make, teach what you learn, and let your work find its audience.
A permission slip for anyone who thinks they have nothing to share yet: the work of getting noticed is simply showing your work as you do it.
Two of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of Show Your Work! pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.
- You don't have to be a genius. Kleon champions the idea of **scenius** (Brian Eno's term), great work emerges from a supportive ecology of collaborators and peers, not lone geniuses, so you can contribute by being a valuable 'node in the network' right now.
- Think process, not product. Since most of your creative life is spent in process rather than finished output, sharing the daily work-in-progress, sketches, drafts, dead ends, is where you connect with people and build an audience over time.
The other 5 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 9 chapters
The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.
- 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
Finish Show Your Work! tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 11 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
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