You might remember your math teacher telling you that the answer was important but “showing your work” was also part of the points on a test. As it turns out, your math teacher was right. This principle still applies today, especially for creative professionals such as visual artists. Social media takes sharing your work to a whole ‘nother level.
This concept was driven home to me by Austin Kleon in his aptly named book Show Your Work . I found out about Austin Kleon thanks to Chase Jarvis.
An image from Kleon’s book.
I am an avid learner of new things and my goal right now is to keep my sharing/teaching as up to date with my current passions and studies as possible. It is easy to want to wait until I am an expert about something before posting videos on youtube about it. However, Austin Kleon has convinced me that it is better to learn from a passionate student than a cynical and jaded old expert.
Right now, I am most passionate about learning as much as I can about herpetoculture, snakes, bioactive vivaria, and the scaping of functional and aesthetic miniature ecosystems.
Here is a recent youtube video I made about this exciting learning process that I knew nothing about 6 months ago:
What are you passionate about right now? Are you avidly learning about it? Could you be sharing your process more?
For more of the benefits of showing your work check out this short video about the book:
