Thoughts on Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
Inspired by how much Ali Abdaal credits this books as the reason he started writing and creating- which has opened up many doors for him later in life- I decided it was time for me to check it out.
Pros:
1) The writing in this is very simple, and very easy to follow.
2) Austin gives out some some really good, and practical reasons as to why you should put your content online.
3) This reason is definitely more selfish than the others mentioned, but I’ve been having a huge slump in my creative pursuits. This book honestly revitalized a lot of those creative juices in me.
4) I love the illustrations given in between the chapters. They make the arguments made in the chapters more understandable.
Cons:
The book itself is very short. And because of this short length, I don’t think that there was a lot of substance in the chapters. A lot of what was being said felt a little generic. Adding on top of that, were some chapters that seemed to be there for the sake of being there.
One that comes off the top of my head was the chapter named The Vampire Test.
Although the concept makes sense, it does feel a little shoehorned in.
The book talks about these topics:
My biggest takeaway was how much people appreciated watching/reading/learning from someone who’s an amateur themselves. It’s a character arc, and that’s how a lot of people build audiences, and subsequently earn.
The key takeaways #2, and #3 focus on this particular point, and that was definitely an eye opening thing.
It’s something Ali Abdaal has mentioned a lot in his videos and I’m guessing he got the idea from here.
But overall, the book was a decent read that gives a great starting guide on what to do when starting out online, and I can see why Ali highly recommends this book
