PNTV: Show Your Work by Austin Kleon (#243)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, show youw Work. Show youw Work by Austin Kleon. Subtitle 10 Ways to Share youe Creativity and Get Discovered. This is the second straight episode we've done on Austin's work. This the last one was on Steal like an Artist. The basic idea is first step is to learn how to steal like an artist and 10 other nine other big ideas on how to get your creativity on. Once you've done that, it's time to learn how to show your work and do that well enough such that you become one of the artists that other people steal from. Really good stuff. Austin describes himself as a writer who draws. This book is kind of a cool coffee table ish kind of book with a bunch of great little doodles in there that help bring the wisdom home. I highly recommend it. Frankly, if you're into creating and getting your work out, I think I'd call it a must have this book, Steal like an Artist and then Steven Pressfield's trilogy, War of Art. Do the work. I'm turning pro. They remind me of one another in different ways and they're all great. Packed with little ideas, quick reading, inspiring, etc. There you go. Long prelude, Philosopher's Note, Bunch of big ideas. Five of my favorites. Let's jump in the first one Days to Overnight. So this idea is two parts. One. Austin tells us there's no such thing as an overnight success. That is a myth, period. So if you think that's the case, then you need to look a little deeper. I quote Dave Ramsey in the note if you in his book Entre Leader, he talks about this idea and he references Malcolm Gladwell. I'm working on a trilogy for Malcolm Gladwell right now. David and Goliath. Outliers. And then Tipping Point. In Outliers, he talks about the Beatles, he talks about Bill Gates, he talks about a bunch of other people who put in their 10,000 hours the 10 years of work required to be an overnight success. Dave Ramsey said that he got an award which is kind of like the Academy Award, the Marconi Award, I think it's called, for radio. Kind of like an Academy Award for the best radio show out there. He received it and he counted up the number of hours that he had been on air. Not just the number of hours he practiced, but the number of hours he'd actually been on air 10,015 years to be an overnight success. That's part one of this first big idea. The second one is if you want to be an overnight success, focus on over 10 years. Focus on putting in a great day. Today a great day, tomorrow in a great day, the day after that, masterpiece days. We come back to this all the time for a reason. All the great teachers remind us that's the only place we have power is can you make today a masterpiece? How can you do that? How can you set up your AM and your PM bookends to give yourself the shot at creating something great. And when you do that, day after day, little by little, drop by drop, you create something extraordinary over the course of your life. If you want to be an overnight success, focus on creating masterful days and give it a decade. Second big idea in showing your work is knowing how to deal with troll poop. So trolls, when you put your work out there, if you already do this, you know this. Some people just aren't going to like it and some people aren't going to be nice about it. And some people may not like it, but they have your best interest in mind, right? And Austin talks about the fact that there's the people who love you and are committed to your work and they give you feedback, some of which may not always be the most awesome, but you trust them and they really have your best interest in mind, right? So we want to be open minded to that group, but we also want to draw a circle around that group and be very aware of anything outside of that group. And then be really aware of trolls who have no interest in supporting you and your work. They're just taking out their own frustrations on you, right? So a couple things to think about here. One, he quotes his wife. Great line. She says, look, if someone is talking about trolls posting things on your site or on your YouTube channel or whatever, right? She says, if someone walked into your living room and took a dump, you'd clean it up. You'd also escort them out, right? So same thing with online. If someone's just being ruthless, Austin says, figure out how to learn the block. Learn how to use the block function on social media sites. I have a very short fuse when people are getting just out of control and they're saying silly things that are just obnoxious. I delete them and I block them. There's enough negativity on YouTube and on Twitter and everywhere else. We don't need that on the channel that I'm creating now, I'm open to feedback and I'll respond and have an intelligent dialogue if someone wants to have that. But if they're just trolling, and not interesting block, let it go. And we got to remember not to take that stuff personally. Anytime someone's doing that and whether it's online or offline, right. The more harsh someone is and the more mean spirited they are to other people. I've trained myself to realize, wow, if that's how they're communicating to me, someone they don't know, how do they communicate to themselves? And I've developed this ability to have really thick skin and brush it off. And also compassion. Not always. Sometimes I get a little bit feisty, but there's still that sense of, wow, this person's really struggling. I don't need to take it personally. Don Miguel Ruiz's right, fourth agreement, one of his four agreements. So keep that in mind and then also remember the fact. And I talk about this in the note. Steven Pressfield tells us, don't be one of those people that's criticizing other people and notice that you tend to be most critical of other people when you aren't doing your work. He says people that are truly self actualizing and that are actually getting their work done very rarely criticize. They appreciate people and they support them in powerful, warm, supportive ways. So keep that in mind and don't be bashful cleaning up the troll poop and know that you're going to get it just part of the deal. Your skin will grow slightly thicker as you do it more and more and more. Third idea here is chain creating. Chain creating. Now, I've never been a big smoker, but the idea here is like chain smoking. You want to chain create, right? So you use one project to light the next project, right? You don't ever let one project completely go out before igniting your next project. He talks about some great creators who had a lifelong career creating amazing stuff, whether it's Woody Allen, I mentioned, Stephen King, Scott Adams, even Michael Phelps. Michael Phelps didn't ever break the chain of his workouts. For five years, he worked out seven days in a row to get a little edge, right? Well, if we want to create consistently, we want to create consistently. Don't stop. Keep Mr. Mo in the house, starve the trolls and feed Mr. Mo, right? Chain creating. You get to the end of one project, start another one. I shared a story from Steven Pressfield. When he finished his first novel, he went to his mentor and he finished it the end. The first time he actually got to the end, it was a huge event for him, right? He brought it over to his mentor who said, fantastic, start your next one tomorrow, immediately start it again. Do not allow a gap to come in. You are a creator. Turn pro. Do that. Ernest Hemingway, Austin tells us, apparently stopped his writing every night mid sentence so he'd know where to pick up the next day. Another one of his friends says, I don't get writing block because I never stop writing. Or an artist that he references. So think about that. If you have fits and starts in your creativity, think about creating consistently and think about chain creating. Fourth big idea here is micro sabbaticals. So sabbatical is related to Sabbath. Once every seven days you rest well in academics. For example, one year out of seven, they'll take off for a sabbatical. Right now, I was laughing as I was typing this because it was about seven years ago that I took a one year sabbatical. Took a couple years off, but a one year sabbatical to go to Bali. Right. My life is so different now with the child being married, with a kid, and with all these other things we got going on that it was actually funny for me to imagine that version of my life. But what we can do if we can't carve out the year for the sabbatical in the near term is we can create micro sabbaticals every single day and week and month. We can create ways to get away from our work. And this is in the context of if you want to really engage in your work, you. You have to know how to disengage. You can't always be on.

Right?

So I'm going to keep on drawing this. In all the episodes where it makes sense, we need to make waves, we need to train. Recovery. People talk about, well, how do you get so much done? Well, it's because I'm focused and I'm as focused and being off as Jim Lohr taught us, the best athletes, the tennis players that he studied, were the ones who recovered the best. Between points, they relaxed deeply and profoundly. We just talked about this in A Mind for Numbers, she says we have a focused mode of thinking and then we have a diffuse mode of thinking. You need to have distributive learning where you do some of one, then some of the other. Kind of like the base camp was the metaphor that she used.

Right.

If you're ascending Everest and you want to put your old flag up there, you have a base camp here. You work hard and you climb. You have another base camp. You work hard, you climb and. And you continue doing that. So we need to create those rhythms in our lives if we want to create in powerful ways consistently and sustainably over the long run. Someone commented recently on the 10x rule by Grant Cardone. They said, look, the only way you can do that is with caffeine. Well, that's one way to do it, but that's trying to do this and to try to keep on going up. And you do that and you're going to go like that and you're not going to be able to get back up at will. You need to oscillate. The best way to do that again is sleep. If you're not getting an adequate amount of sleep, you're not going to give yourself the best chance you can to optimize micro sabbaticals. What's your number one self care habit? Do you remember that we talked about that with Michelle Seeger? You want to actualize your potential, you need to have a strong base. She asks, what's your number one non negotiable self care habit? The thing that if you don't do it, you're not going to have as great of a day as you could. Identify your number one and then do that every single day as a gift to yourself. In our little micro sabbatical. That's our fourth big idea. Fifth one is a great one. Again, we're talking about showing your work. If you're showing your work, you obviously want to have a certain level of impact. You can measure that by the number of followers you have on whatever platform you're interested in being more well known on, right? And be discovered and all that good stuff. He says, well, here's the thing. If you want more followers, don't focus on all the marketing stuff and the gaming and all that stuff. He said, be worthy of having more followers. I just love that final big idea we have in the note. If you want more followers, be worthy of having more followers. I quote Confucius, who has a great line. He says the wise individual is not worried about whether they have a certain position or whether they're recognized in in certain ways. They're so focused being worthy of that recognition. They're so busy working to be worthy of that recognition that they don't care whether they are actually recognized. Be worthy of having more followers. More than worrying about your number of followers, what can you do? How can you show up consistently? We didn't talk about it, but Austin says, share something small every day, serve profoundly, strive to astonish and embody the ideas you're so passionate about such that you're more and more worthy of the attention that you aspire to have and then give it time, right? So you're showing up, you're having great days so that you can be your overnight. You're not measuring your results over a day or a week or a month or even a year. You're in it for the long run. So you're looking at this over the next 10 years and you're just showing up and measuring yourself on process. Can I have a great day today? Not results. What's my follower count today? Right? So again, if you want followers, focus on being worthy of having followers. I also mentioned in the final P.S. a great quote. I don't know where I heard it from, but someone was talking about a minister, a young minister who had a church and his mentor told him, don't count the number of people in your church. Serve as profoundly as you can the people who are there. You do that and the numbers will take care of themselves. I love that. It's how I approach everything. And there you go. Let's be worthy as we embody these ideas. Take our micro sabbaticals. It's a huge way to build in the long term resilience by making waves and taking care of ourselves, chain creating. Keep the momentum going. Use one project to ignite the next or one day's great work to ignite the next days. Learn how to clean up the troll poop and great days overnight success. Those are some of my favorite big ideas.

I hope you enjoyed again.

I highly recommend it. Awesome book, super fun. And there you go. What was the idea that jumped out at you that resonated the most? How can you bring it into your life more consistently in the process? Have another awesome day. Look forward to sharing more.

See ya.

Hi, this is Brian.

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