1. You don’t have to be a genius.
Being a valuable part of a scenius is not necessarily about how smart or talented you are, but about what you have contributed — the ideas you share, the quality of the connections you make, and the conversation you start
In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert mind, there are few”
The stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act.
You can move from mediocre to good in increments; the real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.
Amateurs might lack formal training, but they are all lifelong learners, and they make a point of learning in the open so that others can learn from their failures and successes.
Watching amateurs at work can also inspire us to attempt the work ourselves, which expert me it so long ago that might he have forgotten.
Amateurs use whatever tools they can get their hands on to try to get their ideas into the world.
Think about what you want to learn and make a commitment to learning it in front of others. Find a scenius, pay attention to what others are sharing, and then start taking note of what they’re not sharing
Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you.
It sounds a little extreme, but in this day and age, if your work isn’t online, it doesn’t exist.
2. Think process, not product.
Sharing your process might actually be most valuable if the products of your work aren’t easily shared, if you’re still in the apprentice stage of your work, if you can’t just slap up a portfolio and call it a day, or if your process doesn’t necessarily lead to tangible finished products.
Take a lot of photographs of your work at different stages in your process. Shoot a video of you working. This isn’t about making art, it’s about simply keeping track of what’s going on around you
Whether you share it or not, documenting and recording your process as you go along has its own rewards
You’ll start to see the work you’re doing more clearly and feel like you’re making progress. And when you’re ready to share, you’ll have a surplus of material to choose from.
3. Share something small everyday.
Building a substantial body of work takes a long time — a lifetime. But you don’t need that time all in one big chunk.
Forget about decades, forget about years, forget about months. Focus on Days.
Season change, weeks are completely human-made, but the day has a rhythm.
Where you are in your process will determine what the piece is. If you’re in the very early stages, share you influences, and what’s inspiring you. If you’re in the middle of executing a project, write about your methods or share work in progress.
If you just completed a project, show the final product, share scraps from the cutting room floor, or write about what you learned.
A daily dispatch is even better than a resume and portfolio, because it shows what we’re working on right now.
In terms of social media platforms or new technologies, don’t be afraid to be an early adopter — jump on the new platform and see if there’s something interesting you can do with it.
90% if everything is crap. The same is true of our own work. The trouble is, we don’t always know what’s good and what sucks.
We are busy, but we all get 24 hours a day. People often ask me, “How do you find the time for all this?” And I answer, I look for it
Don’t post things online that you’re not ready for everyone in the world to see
Be open, share imperfect and unfinished work that you want feedback on, but don’t share absolutely everything
If you’re unsure about whether to share something, let it sit for 24 hours. Put it in the drawer and walk out the door. The next day, take it out and look at it with fresh eyes. Ask yourself, “Is this helpful? Is this entertaining? Is it something I’m comfortable with my boss or my mother seeing? There is nothing wrong with saving things for later
Don’t think of your website as a self-promotion machine; think of it as a self-invention machine
Over the years, you will be tempted to abandon it for the newest, shiniest social network. Don’t give in. Don’t let it fall into neglect. Think about it in the long term. Stick with it, maintain it, and let it change with you over time.
4. Open your cabinet of curiosities
For the first couple of years, you make stuff, it’s not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste the thing that got you in to the game, is still killer
We all love things that other people think are garbage. You have to have the courage to keep loving your garbage.
When you find things you genuinely enjoy, don’t let anyone else make you feel bad about it.
Without attribution, they have no way to dig deeper into the work or find more of it.
Attribution is all about providing context for what you’re sharing: what the work is, who made it, how they made it, when and where it was made, why you're sharing it, why people should care about it, and where people can see more work like it.
Another form of attribution that we often neglect is where we found the work that we’re sharing.
Work doesn’t speak for itself.
Stories are such a powerful driver of emotional value that their effect on any given object’s subjective value can actually be measured objectively.”
If you want to be more effective when sharing yourself and your work, you need to become a better storyteller.
The most important part of a story is its structure. A good story structure is tidy, sturdy, and logical.
If you study the structure of stories, you start to see how they work, and once you know how they work, you can then start stealing story structures and filling them in with characters, situations, and setting from your own life.
A good pitch is set up in the three acts: The first act is the past, the second act is the present, and the third act is the future.
The first act is where you’ve been — what you want, how you came to want it, and what you’ve done so far to get it.
The second act is where you are now in your work and how you’ve worked hard and used up most of your resources.
The third act is where you’re going, and how exactly the person you’re pitching can help you get there.
Whether you’re telling a finished or unfinished story, always keep your audience in mind. Speak to them directly in plain language. Value their time. Be brief. Learn to speak. Learn to write. Use spell-check. You’re never “keeping it real” with your lack of proofreading and punctuation; you’re keeping it unintelligible
Everybody loves a good story, but good storytelling doesn’t come easy to everybody. It’s a skill that takes a lifetime to master.
Your stories will get better the more you tell them
Talk about yourself at parties
If you have a weird hybrid job, say something like, “I’m a writer who draws”.
Share your trade secrets.
Teaching doesn’t mean instant competition. Just because you know the master’s technique doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to emulate it right away.
The minute you learn something, turn around and teach it to others.
Share your reading list. Point to helpful reference materials. Create some tutorials and post them online. Use pictures, words, and video. Take people step by step through part of your process.
Make people better at something they want to be better at.
Learn …….. and then Teach.
Teaching people doesn’t subtract value from what you do; it actually adds to it. When you teach someone how to do your work, you are, in effect, generating more interest in your work.
People feel closer to your work because you’re letting them in on what you know.
Best of all, when you share your knowledge and your work with others, you receive an education in return.
7. Don’t turn into human spam.
If you want fans, you have to be a fan first. To be accepted by a community, you must first be a good citizen of that community
You have to be a connector
If you want to get, you have to give
If you want to be noticed, you have to notice. Shut up and listen once in a while.
Stop worrying about how many people follow you online and start worrying about the quality of people who follow you.
Don’t waste time following people online just because you think it’ll get you somewhere.
Don’t talk to people you don’t want to talk to, and don’t talk about stuff you don’t want to speak about.
If you want followers, be someone worth following.
IF you want to be interesting, you have to be interested
It is actually true that life is all about “who you know”. But who you know is largely dependent on who you are and what you do, and the people you know can’t do anything for you if you’re not doing good work.
How many people waste time and energy trying to make connections instead of getting good at what they do, when “being good at things is the only thing that earns you clout or connections.”
Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love, and you’ll attract people who love that kind of stuff
If, after hanging out with someone, you feel worn out and depleted, that person is a vampire. If, after hanging out with someone, you still feel full of energy, that person is not a vampire
Identify your fellow knuckleballers.
8. Learn to take a punch.
Let’ em take their best shot.
When you put your work out into the world, you have to be ready for the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The more people come across your work, the more criticism you’ll face.
Bad criticism is not the end of the world.
The more criticism you take, the more you realize it can’t hurt you.
Every piece if criticism is an opportunity for new work.
Protect your vulnerable areas. — If you have work that is too sensitive or too close to you to be exposed to criticism, keep it hidden.
The trick is not caring what everybody thinks of you and just caring about what the right people think of you.”
You want feedback from people who care about yo and what you do. Be extra wary of feedback from anybody who falls outside of that circle.
Trolls is a person who isn’t interested in improving or upsetting talk.
Don’t feed them and they’ll usually go away.
The worst troll is the one that lives in your head. It’s the voice that tells you you’re not good enough, that you suck, and that you’ll never amount to anything.
Even the renaissance had to be funded.
Don’t be one of those horrible fans who stops listening to your favorite band just because they have a hit single.
Don’t be jealous when the people you like do well— celebrate their victory as if it’s your own.
Even if you don’t have anything to sell right now, you should always be collecting email addresses from people who come across your work and want to stay in touch.
Make more work for yourself.
A life of creativity is all about change moving forward, taking chances, exploring new frontiers. “The real risk is in not changing,”. You have to feel that you’re after something.
Be ambitious. Keep yourself busy. Think bigger. Expand your audience.
Try new things. If an opportunity comes along that will allow you to do more of the kind of work you want to do, say Yes.
If an opportunity comes along that would mean more money, but less of the kind of work you want to do, say No.
As a human being, you have a finite amount of time and attention. At some point, you have to switch from saying “yes” a lot to saying “no” a lot.
The biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing the thing that you do, because you are successful.
You’re holding on to the ladder. When they cut off your hands, hold on with your elbow. When they cut off your arms, hold on with your teeth. You don’t quit because you don’t know where the next job is coming from
A successful or failed project is no guarantee of another success or failure. Whether you’ve just won big or lost big, you still have to face the question “What next?”.
You avoid stalling out in your career by never losing momentum
Instead of taking a break in between projects, waiting for feedback, and worrying about what’s next, use the end of one project to light up the next one. Just do the work that’s in front of you, and when it’s finished, ask yourself what you missed, what you could’ve done better, or what you couldn’t get to, and jump right into the next project.
Go away so you can come backChain-smoking is a great way to keep going, but at some point, you might burn out and need to go looking for a match
It’s very important to separate your work from the rest of your life
If you never go to work, you never get to leave work.”
When you feel like you’ve learned whatever there is to learn from what you’re doing, it’s time to change course and find something new to learn so that you can move forward.
You can’t be content with mastery; you have to push yourself to become a student again.
Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably ins’t learning enough,”
An artist has an obligation to be en route to be going somewhere
Be fresh, trying to be new, trying to call on yourself a little more
When you get rid of old material, you push yourself further and come up with something better
So don’t think of it as starting over. Think of it as beginning again. Go back to chapter one— literally! — and become an amateur.
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