RD x's Key Ideas from Show Your Work!
by Austin Kleon

• You can't find your voice if you don't use it.
• Today, if your work is not ONLINE, it doesn't exist.
• Share your work or even some ongoing process from it with the world to get noticed.

OBITUARIES are not about death, they are about life. Read 1 daily and get inspired about what should or should not be written on yours.

• Take people behind the scenes, and show them the other side of work you are engaged in, people want to see how things are made/planned.
• Every student should make something from his knowledge and resources because no one is going to provide you with the job/work according to your CV. They want to see the work you did with your fingers.
• Use your fully functional multimedia device from your pocket to show them what you are into ( Research, References, Drawing, Plans, Sketches, Interviews, Audio, Photos, Pinboards, Demos, Notes, Inspirations, Stories, Collections, Drafts, Prototypes).

Overnight Success is a MYTH.

Once you dig deep into the story, you'll find the truth. You'll find the months, years, or decades of some hidden talent, priorities, and habits that provided the success.

When people ask any creator/artist, "How do you find time for that?" They say, "I look for it." 

You need to find the time for the things you really want to do. Find it during a commute, between work, etc. 

Only share the things that are necessary, and related to your final work. Don't show your lunch or latte, just show your work.

Sharing is good, Oversharing is bad. It'll trap you in its own process.

Don't feel embarrassed when sharing. Make mistakes. Go through the 'SO WHAT' test before sharing anything.

Stock is the durable stuff. It is the content you produce that will be searched today or even a few years later.

Flow is the feed, daily, or sub-daily process updates you share to exist.

Magic formula- Maintain your Flow while working on your Stock in the background.

The author says that a lot of ideas in this book were tweets, then they became blog posts and then became chapters.

You need to be there online. Get a good domain name for your website (It is your space where you express yourself, your ideas, and your thought process). Your website doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to exist.

Reading feeds the Writing, which then feeds the Reading.

You are only as good as your own record collection. This includes the books/articles you read, the music you listen to, the people you are influenced by, things you fill your head with, sites you visit, movies, art, work you admire, and heroes, who you follow online and offline.

Find the things you enjoy doing, but don't let anyone else make you feel bad about it. Don't feel guilty about the pleasures you take in those things, celebrate them.

Be open & honest about the things/people you love, that's the only way to connect with like-minded.

You should give the proper credit to the work you took

• What it is?
• Who made it?
• When did he/she make it?
• Why we should care?
• How I find it?
• Where to find more things like this?

This is known as ATTRIBUTION.

Because work doesn't speak for itself.

WORDS MATTER- People want to know who made it, why it was made, where it came from, and why we need this.

A good story behind an ordinary product can make it a huge brand.

People want to connect, so you need to add some personal stories, and for this, you should be a great storyteller.

"The cat sat on a mat"- is not a story.

"The cat sat on a dog's mat"- is a story that attracts.

The structure of a story is the most important. Work on that. Be brief. Learn writing, speaking, and proofreading. 

Be ready for questions after talking about yourself. Answer Politely.

Learning and teaching are related to each other. The more you teach, the more you will be interested in the topic. Teaching something you know, rather than subtracting, adds more value.

We think that teaching some skills will create direct or indirect competition, but it's not like that. Just learning, not practicing enough, can not make anyone a master.

Masters have practiced more than a student has even tried.

As every intellectual knows, every writer has to become a reader first. One process supports the other.

But a HUMAN SPAM is a person who wants to get published in a journal he has never read. One habit of them is of just talking, not listening. They just want to get noticed without contributing something. They just want the number of followers without looking for their quality.

You should look for hearts, not eyeballs.

Stop worrying about how many followers are there, start worrying about the quality of people who follow you.

If you want to gain more followers, you need to be someone who is interesting & worth following. You have to be interested in particular things to be interesting.

Follower's FORMULA- Make stuff you love, talk about that stuff, and you'll automatically attract people who love that stuff. It's that SIMPLE.

Take your fellows through the VAMPIRE TEST (Some people are like Vampires, they take all your energy).

They can't be cured but can be avoided.

• Relax/Breathe/Meditate- (No one dies from a bad review).
• Strengthen your neck- (Put on more work, The more criticism you take, the more you realize that it can't hurt you).
• Roll with the PUNCHES- (We can't control what kind of criticism we receive, but we can control our reaction to it).

Having your work hated by certain people is a BADGE OF HONOR.

• Protect your vulnerable areas- (Don't avoid getting embarrassed, it's a form of suicide).
• Keep your balance- (Your work is something you do, not who you are. Don't take it personally. Don't care about everyone's review, but only for the right people).

A TROLL is a person who is not interested in improving your work but only provokes you with hateful, aggressive, and upsetting talk.

• Don't feed them, they usually go away if you don't react to them.
• Try not to have a comment section to avoid these kinds of people. There are no blank spaces under paintings in Art Galleries.

Every Artist Needs Funds.

• Keep a mailing list- Even though most of us hate emails, all of us have an email address. Reach through emails.
• Encourage them to sign up by being clear about what they can expect from you and the frequency of the updates. Will it be daily/weekly/monthly or infrequently?
• Make more work for yourself. Think bigger. Keep yourself busy.
• Be as generous as you can but selfish enough to get your work done.

"Liked my work, buy me a coffee."

"Whatever you do, Don't quit your show. Work is never finished, just abandoned".

Whether hit or flop, you still have to face questions (What's Next). You need to be able to persevere, regardless of success or failure. This is what I call CHAIN SMOKING.

We work because it's a chain reaction, each subject leads to the next.

Plan SABBATICALS (Daily/Monthly/Weekly)- Go away so you can come back. Because the minute you stop wanting something, you get it.

Plan it during a commute, while exercising, or while in nature without any device or instrument (body and mind relax each other).

Don't be content with MASTERY. Learn something new every day, change your courses, and find new ways of doing things always.

Push yourself to be a student again.

Anyone who is not embarrassed of who they were last year probably is not learning enough.

Throw old work, so that we can make room for new.

Books are made out of books.

Invent another you.

Our Obituaries are written before we are dead.

You must become the Editor, while you are still the creator.