About the book
Author : Austin Keleon
Genre : Self Help
Pages : 224
Published : 6 March 2014
Goodreads : 4.1 / 5
Summary of Content
Show Your Work! is a book that teaches you, well, how to show your work.
Author Austin Kleon gives some great insight into how creativity and self-promotion is to be seen in the tiny book. The book consists of 10 chapters, each exploring different ways to make yourself or your content discovered.
I. You Don’t Have to Be a Genius.
2. Think Process, Not Product.
3. Share Something Small Everyday.
4. Open Up Your Cabinet of Curiosities.
5. Tell Good Stories.
6. Teach What You Know.
7. Don’t Turn Into Human Spam.
8. Learn to Take a Punch.
9. Sell Out.
10. Stick Around.
As the chapters are tiny, talking a moment after each chapter to reflect on how each value can be implemented in your life can help you get more out of this book.
My Thoughts
Don’t be fooled by the number of pages, the book is small, and I mean by size and by the amount of content to read. The book is filled with pictures and abstract writing, which definitely shows the quirkiness of the Author. You can easily finish this book in a day or even within a few hours.
This book has some of my favorite quotes, which isn’t from the author itself, but from other notable figures. Some of them include :
“The problem with hoarding is you end up living off your reserves. Eventually, you’ll become stale. If you give away everything you have, you are left with nothing. This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish…. Somehow the more you give away, the more conies back to you.” – Paul Arden
“When people realize they’re being listened to, they tell you things” – Richard Ford
“The trick is not caring what EVERYBODY thinks of you and just caring about what the RIGHT people think of you.” – Brian Michael Bendis
“Whenever Picasso learned how to do something, he abandoned it” – Milton Glaser
It’s a fairly simple and straight forward book, which can certainly help content creators or, in the least, give them that last push they need to put themselves out there.