show-your-work-kleon

Name: show-your-work-kleon
Author: simbajigege

7installs21forks

How to install show-your-work-kleon?

simbajigege/book2skills/show-your-work-kleon

$npx -y skills add simbajigege/book2skills --skill show-your-work-kleon

Installs into the current project.

Summary

Apply Austin Kleon''s sharing framework. Trigger on: "what should I share?", "build an audience", "document my creative process".

Files · 1

View on GitHub

SKILL.md

1	## Core Philosophy
2
3	Austin Kleon's Show Your Work! makes a single counterintuitive argument: you don't need talent, credentials, or a finished body of work before you start sharing. You need to share the process of becoming. The audience finds you not because of what you've produced, but because they recognize themselves in how you work.
4
5	The fundamental reframe: stop thinking "I need to finish this before I can share it." Start thinking "sharing IS the work."
6
7	---
8
9
10	## When to Use This Skill
11
12	Use this skill for queries that match the trigger phrases in the description and require applying the decision framework from Show Your Work! rather than summarizing the book.
13
14	## The Framework
15
16	### Principle 1: Scenius Over Genius
17
18	Kleon borrows the term "scenius" from Brian Eno — the idea that creativity is not the product of lone geniuses but of collaborative ecology: a group of people in the same scene who share ideas, steal from each other generously, build on each other's work.
19
20	Why this matters for sharing: You are not a solo creator broadcasting to an audience. You are a node in a scenius. When you share your process, your influences, your failures, and your questions, you contribute to a creative ecosystem that is larger than any individual. The scenius rewards contributors.
21
22	Practical implication: Credit your influences publicly. Show what you're learning from. Make your "scenius" visible — the books you're reading, the artists inspiring you, the problems you're wrestling with.
23
24	### Principle 2: The Amateur Advantage
25
26	"Amateur" comes from the Latin for "lover." An amateur does work for the love of it, not for money or credentials. Kleon argues the amateur has a structural advantage over the professional:
27
28	- Less to lose by experimenting publicly
29	- Willing to ask "dumb" questions that experts have forgotten to ask
30	- Enthusiasm that is contagious (professionals often hide theirs)
31	- Learning in public at full speed, which is itself compelling to watch
32
33	The amateur's assignment: Share what you're learning as you learn it. The tutorial you write the week after learning something is better than the tutorial an expert writes years later — because you remember what it was like not to know.
34
35	### Principle 3: You Are What You Share
36
37	"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." — Shunryu Suzuki
38
39	Your online presence is not a resume — it's a cabinet of curiosities. What you share signals who you are, what you care about, and who you want to attract. You don't need to brand yourself explicitly; you reveal yourself through what you find worth sharing.
40
41	The curation question: "Does this add value to the audience's day, or is it just noise?"
42
43	Kleon's "So What?" test: Before posting anything, ask: "So what? Who cares? What's interesting about this?" If you can't answer it, don't post it. If you can answer it clearly in one sentence, post it.
44
45	### Principle 4: Open Up Your Process
46
47	Most creators show the finished product. Kleon argues you should show the work behind the work — the messy middle, the false starts, the revision history, the tools you use, the questions you're asking.
48
49	"Become a documentarian of what you do." Think of yourself as a filmmaker doing a behind-the-scenes documentary, not a marketing department. The behind-the-scenes footage is often more compelling than the film itself.
50
51	What to share from your process:
52	- Your current influences (what you're reading, watching, listening to)
53	- Problems you're trying to solve and how you're approaching them
54	- Work-in-progress — sketches, drafts, prototypes
55	- Your method: tools, routines, systems
56	- Failures and what you learned from them
57	- Questions you're genuinely wrestling with
58
59	The Chris Hadfield example: When Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield went to the International Space Station, he began sharing daily glimpses of life in space — videos of how astronauts cry in zero gravity, how they brush their teeth, how Earth looks at sunset from orbit. By the time he recorded his cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" in space, he had 1 million followers who had been with him daily for months. The song video got 22 million views in the first month. He didn't wait until he had a finished product to share.
60
61	### Principle 5: Share Something Small Every Day
62
63	Kleon's "daily dispatch" practice: Share one small thing every day. Not a finished piece — a scrap, an observation, a question, a photo of what's on your desk, a sentence that struck you while reading.
64
65	The consistency principle: Daily sharing over years creates something no single post can — familiarity and trust. An audience built through daily

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show-your-work-kleon

7installs21forks

View on GitHub

How to install show-your-work-kleon?

simbajigege/book2skills/show-your-work-kleon

$npx -y skills add simbajigege/book2skills --skill show-your-work-kleon

Installs into the current project.

Summary

Apply Austin Kleon''s sharing framework. Trigger on: "what should I share?", "build an audience", "document my creative process".

Files · 1

View on GitHub

SKILL.md

1	## Core Philosophy
2
3	Austin Kleon's Show Your Work! makes a single counterintuitive argument: you don't need talent, credentials, or a finished body of work before you start sharing. You need to share the process of becoming. The audience finds you not because of what you've produced, but because they recognize themselves in how you work.
4
5	The fundamental reframe: stop thinking "I need to finish this before I can share it." Start thinking "sharing IS the work."
6
7	---
8
9
10	## When to Use This Skill
11
12	Use this skill for queries that match the trigger phrases in the description and require applying the decision framework from Show Your Work! rather than summarizing the book.
13
14	## The Framework
15
16	### Principle 1: Scenius Over Genius
17
18	Kleon borrows the term "scenius" from Brian Eno — the idea that creativity is not the product of lone geniuses but of collaborative ecology: a group of people in the same scene who share ideas, steal from each other generously, build on each other's work.
19
20	Why this matters for sharing: You are not a solo creator broadcasting to an audience. You are a node in a scenius. When you share your process, your influences, your failures, and your questions, you contribute to a creative ecosystem that is larger than any individual. The scenius rewards contributors.
21
22	Practical implication: Credit your influences publicly. Show what you're learning from. Make your "scenius" visible — the books you're reading, the artists inspiring you, the problems you're wrestling with.
23
24	### Principle 2: The Amateur Advantage
25
26	"Amateur" comes from the Latin for "lover." An amateur does work for the love of it, not for money or credentials. Kleon argues the amateur has a structural advantage over the professional:
27
28	- Less to lose by experimenting publicly
29	- Willing to ask "dumb" questions that experts have forgotten to ask
30	- Enthusiasm that is contagious (professionals often hide theirs)
31	- Learning in public at full speed, which is itself compelling to watch
32
33	The amateur's assignment: Share what you're learning as you learn it. The tutorial you write the week after learning something is better than the tutorial an expert writes years later — because you remember what it was like not to know.
34
35	### Principle 3: You Are What You Share
36
37	"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." — Shunryu Suzuki
38
39	Your online presence is not a resume — it's a cabinet of curiosities. What you share signals who you are, what you care about, and who you want to attract. You don't need to brand yourself explicitly; you reveal yourself through what you find worth sharing.
40
41	The curation question: "Does this add value to the audience's day, or is it just noise?"
42
43	Kleon's "So What?" test: Before posting anything, ask: "So what? Who cares? What's interesting about this?" If you can't answer it, don't post it. If you can answer it clearly in one sentence, post it.
44
45	### Principle 4: Open Up Your Process
46
47	Most creators show the finished product. Kleon argues you should show the work behind the work — the messy middle, the false starts, the revision history, the tools you use, the questions you're asking.
48
49	"Become a documentarian of what you do." Think of yourself as a filmmaker doing a behind-the-scenes documentary, not a marketing department. The behind-the-scenes footage is often more compelling than the film itself.
50
51	What to share from your process:
52	- Your current influences (what you're reading, watching, listening to)
53	- Problems you're trying to solve and how you're approaching them
54	- Work-in-progress — sketches, drafts, prototypes
55	- Your method: tools, routines, systems
56	- Failures and what you learned from them
57	- Questions you're genuinely wrestling with
58
59	The Chris Hadfield example: When Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield went to the International Space Station, he began sharing daily glimpses of life in space — videos of how astronauts cry in zero gravity, how they brush their teeth, how Earth looks at sunset from orbit. By the time he recorded his cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" in space, he had 1 million followers who had been with him daily for months. The song video got 22 million views in the first month. He didn't wait until he had a finished product to share.
60
61	### Principle 5: Share Something Small Every Day
62
63	Kleon's "daily dispatch" practice: Share one small thing every day. Not a finished piece — a scrap, an observation, a question, a photo of what's on your desk, a sentence that struck you while reading.
64
65	The consistency principle: Daily sharing over years creates something no single post can — familiarity and trust. An audience built through daily

People who liked this also viewed

6 picks

Type