Know that You Know Nothing
To be a master, one must always be a student
Today I finished my first read of this awesome little yellow nugget of motivational gold. Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work serves as something of a daily devotional for creatives. You can pick it up, flip to any page and garner wisdom to take on the day. I liken it to Jocko Willink’s Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual in that respect. Only, I don’t feel like shouting OO-RAH! after reading it. Or maybe I do. OO-RAH!
One of the tips/lessons Austin lays on you toward the end is that we should never be satisfied with mastery. When we get good at something, that is when we need to look for how to approach it in a different way.
I reckon it to the belt system in many martial arts. Black belt is a landmark achievement, but it is not a stopping point. You’ve entered a whole new world of learning. You’ve become that new student again–the white belt–who sees all techniques with fresh eyes. Everything is an experiment.
That is how we are to write. We never rest on our laurels and think, “I’ve got this.” There is always some new way to tell a story, connect with a reader, to promote, to market, to communicate and network. We must be ready to try them. When we believe we’ve got it down, that we have it mastered, that is when we start to fail.
Pick up a copy of Show Your Work. You’ll learn something new.
