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| 'Show Your Work' by Austin Kleon |
“Show Your Work” by Austin Kleon, I had this on my
Amazon Wish List for quite some time and devoured it in one sitting when it
arrived after the publish date. I saved writing
about it till today for a number of
reasons.
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| The Process for the 'New Header' |
Firstly, today I start my weekly Wednesday blog
thread, the main theme for this is ‘The Spectrum of Mindful Living.’ (The banner shown is a mock up because the
final one isn’t quite ready.) I’m
following Austin’s advice here and ‘sharing the process’ because waiting till
you’re ready kind of leads to nothing getting done.
“Show Your Work” is a book written by a man who
‘walks the walk’. I felt like I had
followed this work through it’s not ready stage, it’s development and it’s final
release into the world and enjoyed every step.
This is a book of “10 ways to share your creativity
and get discovered”. And each way commends
the virtues of showing your work whether you think it’s ready to go “out there”
or not. In fact it brings a whole new
meaning to the concept of “ready”. And
as much as your work may be your life it is about sharing your work not your
life, sharing processes, and unashamedly tooting your own trumpet. Tooting your own trumpet by sharing your love
for what you do, not by hitting the ‘hard sell’’ option.
I loved the concept of ‘the Vampire Test’,
summarised in the quote from Derek Sivers “Whatever excites you, go do it.
Whatever drains you, stop doing it.” It's a Tweetable
This was such an easy and enjoyable read full of great stuff, some of
it you already knew but a gentle
reminder is always worth having, and some you knew but hadn’t quite thought of
it ‘that way’.
Like “Steal Like An Artist”, “Show Your Work” ends
with a plan to take forward and my reason for not writing this post before
now. There’s a page to show your work
on. I’ve now filled mine in and ‘show’
it here:
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Puting it out there for some accountability
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The mindful bit about today’s piece: Focusing on
doing what you love makes more of it – and I’m committing to completing 3 books
for September: 3 ways of telling one story – a novel about a girl finding her
focus, a ‘non-fiction’ about finding your focus and a craft book of mixed
medium art with ‘how-tos’ and lots of lovely pics.
All with a Focus on Mindful Living.
Remember We really do ‘get more of what we focus on’.
