I'm going to try to teach you how to think about your work as a never-ending process, how to share your process in a way that attracts people who might be interested in what you do, and how to deal with the ups and downs of putting yourself and your work out in the world.

Flow:

1. A new way of operating: Be so good that they can't ignore you and be findable. It is the new way of operating. Do the good work and make it discoverable while you are doing the creative work. Crank away at work while taking advantage of the network.

Instead of wasting their time "networking", they're taking advantage of the network. By generously sharing their ideas and their knowledge, they often gain an audience that they can leverage when they need it-for fellowship, feedback, or patronage.

2. Scenius: The lone genius is a myth. Sometimes it feels like some are touched and inspired by the gods themselves and seemingly, out of nowhere, they spend time in their studios and come out with a great time transcending work. This is a myth which paints an antisocial color to the genius. A healthier way to see them are as a scenius (term coined by Brian Eno). In this way of thinking, great ideas are birthed by a scene of community of artists. They have inspired one another. This way of thinking celebrates the brilliance of the artist as well as acknowledges social contribution.

Find a scenius, pay attention to what others are sharing, and then start taking note of what they're not sharing. Be on the lookout for voids that you can fill with your own efforts, no matter how bad they are at first.

We need to forget trying to be a genius and explore how we can be part of a scenius where we can contribute- ideas, conversation etc.

3. Be an amateur- Amateurs are those who pursue their passion in the spirit of love regardless of potential for fame, money, career etc. The amateur has little to lose and are willing to experiment and share the results.

On the spectrum of creative work, the difference between the mediocre and good is vast. Mediocrity is, however, still on the spectrum; you can move from mediocre to good in increments. The real gap is between doing nothing and something — Clay Shirky

Amateurs know that contributing something is better than contributing nothing.

Be an amateur who takes the risks and pursues the passion and learns in the open. Forget about being the expert and professional. Share what you love and what you are doing. Other lovers will find you. Move from nothing to something.

4. Use your voice to find it: The only way to find your voice is by using it. When we talk about things we love, our voice will follow. One needs to put the work out there in whatever form with an amateur spirit. This is how you find your voice.

5. Process matters as much as product: Very often we only think of publishing the final product. That seems to be the traditional way of thinking. That way of thinking belonged to an older age where there was avenue only for the final product to be displayed. But now, in the digital age, there is no excuse for the creator to not show the work process. The artist can share whatever and how much ever of their process they are comfortable sharing. They can share work-in-progress too. The artist cares about the day-to-day process of the thing they love to do-—the thing that actually leads to the final product.

By putting things out there, consistently, you can form a relationship with your customers. It allows them to see the person behind the products—Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt in It Will be Exhilarating.

Become a documentarian of what you do. Whatever you do, there's some art and method to it and there would be people interested in that art. Show your work even when you have nothing to show. Don't just focus on the painting (final product) but the painting (the verb...the process). Document that.

The first step is to scoop up the scraps and the residue of your process and shape them into some interesting bit of media that you can share. You have to turn the invisible into something other people can see.

Document your work at the various stages in the process. Take photographs of it. Shoot videos of it. It need not be great. View it as tracking your work. Even if we do not share it, we will be able to see our work more clearly.

Once a day, after you've done your day's work, go back to your documentation and find one little piece of your process that you can share.

If you 're in the early stages, share your influences and what's inspiring you. If you are in the middle of executing a project, write about your methods or share works in progress. If you've just completed a project, show the final product, share scraps from the cutting-room floor, or write about what you learned. If you have lots of projects out into the world, you can report on how they're doing-you can tell stories about how people are interacting with your work.

Do a daily dispatch of your work as it shows what you have been working on every day. The content of the daily dispatch can be depending on the stage of the project as mentioned in the quote above. When you think of what to share, go by the question asked by dribble.com "What are you working on?". Share only that which will be helpful to you (in terms of feedback) or others. Don't share everything indiscriminately.

Austin speaks of excuses that creators make. They fear imperfection (most are imperfect) and lack of time (find your time by quitting other things). He calls out the BS on both. And don't fear things being imperfect. Sci-fi writer, Theodore Sturgeon, said that 90 percent of everything is crap. That applies to our work. We can find comfort in that thought as well as leverage that to identify what is good by getting things in front of others.

‘Stock and Flow’ is an interesting concept that Austin mentions. He takes it from an economic concept that writer Robin Sloan takes from and adapts for media. Flow is the daily stream of tweets and posts of updates/info that one puts out. Stock is the more durable stuff which is something people find interesting even some months later. It is the stuff that people search on the internet. Austin says that the best way to capture it is to visit old posts and look for trends and patterns in our work.

You have to flip back through old ideas to see what you've been thinking. Once you make sharing part of your daily routine, you'll notice themes and trends emerging in what you share. You'll find patterns in your flow. When you detect these patterns, you can start gathering these bits and pieces and turn them into something bigger and more substantial. You can turn your flow into your stock.

6. Build a good domain name- Every creator needs to get their own space on the internet because many platforms come and go. Moreover, there are limitations of pursuing our creative endeavors on social media which is owned by others.

A blog is that ideal machine for turning flow into stock: One little blog post is nothing on its own, but publish a thousand blog posts over a decade, and it turns into your life's work.

7. Don't be a hoarder- We all have our treasured collections form various experiences of places we've been to, people we met, jobs we have done etc.

These mental scrapbooks form our tastes, and our tastes influence our work.

We need to utilize these to create. There is a connection between our collection and our creation. Your influences are worth sharing. He suggests that we need to look at the scraps of others. There might be treasures in what others are discarding. Celebrate your influences. Do not let others' views cloud or restrict you from sharing it. Own it. When you share others' work attribute it to them. Citation Attribution is important. It is a matter of showing respect to our sources and our reader. In an online format, hyperlinking is the most important way of attribution.

7. Work doesn't speak for itself- Though work has value in itself, it's value increases manifold when connected to an apt story.

Human beings want to know where things came from, how they were made, and who made them. The stories you tell about the work you do have a huge effect on how people feel and what they understand about your work, and how people feel and what they understand about your work effects how the value it.

We need to study the craft of storying. There are different models to it. Every client presentation, fund raising request etc. are all pitches. They are stories with ends missing because we are living in the middle of that story. They are all essentially a pitch.

8. Talk about yourself at parties: Think through what you would like to say when you introduce yourself to others. Keep in mind different kinds of people.

9. Shut up and listen- There are many human spammers in different places. They are there for self-promotion and do not really want to learn from anyone. Life is all about themselves. There are newbies and famous people who are human spams.

They're everywhere, and they exist in every profession. They don't want to pay their dues, they want their piece right here, right now. They don't want to listen to your ideas.

Most forward-thinking artists are not looking for fans or passive consumers. They are looking for collaborators or co-conspirators.

These artists acknowledge that good work isn't created in a vacuum, and that the experience of art if always a two-way street, incomplete without feedback.

If you want fans, you have to be a fan first. If you want to be accepted by a community, you have to be a good citizen of that community.

Be 'interesting'. To be interesting, you have to be interested in the other person and their work first. That's what makes on interesting. This idea is from Lawrence Weschler.

Why is this important: This is important because it is important to let go of the illusion that geniuses produce stellar 'originals'. That illusion stops many from doing great work. People don’t put in the hard work necessary because of this limiting mindset.

Flow:

1. Where does one get ideas from? By stealing. A good artist understands that nothing comes from nowhere. There is nothing new under the sun. Thus we should embrace influence instead of chasing originality.

2. Garbage in garbage out- The artist is a collector and not a hoarder. Our job is to collect and curate good ideas. Steal that which directly speaks to our soul.

3. Climb your own family tree, read deeply, and make notes- Chew on one thinker you really love (writer, activist, artists) and study everything that person has contributed. Seek who their influences are and study them too. Repeat the process and you will have your own genealogy. See yourself as part of this lineage as you make stuff. You will be in great company now.

You have to be curious about the world in which you live. Look things up. Chase down every reference. Go deeper than anybody else-that's how you'll get ahead.

Be a note maker. Make notes all the time of whatever inspires you of others work. Create a swipe file.

If I'd waited to know who I was or what I was about before I started "being creative", well, I'd still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things. In my experience, it's in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are.

How does one make when there is a paralyzing fear? The impostor syndrome is real. The fact is that all educated people feel it. The only way about it is to fake it till you make it. Nobody is born with a voice. It comes with pretending to take off from people we admire. The more people we admire, all their traits will influence us. It does involve studying the people we love and learning to think like them.

The reason to copy your heroes and their style is so that you might somehow get a glimpse into their minds. That's what you really want-to internalize their way of looking at the world.

Move from imitation to emulation of these heroes. Imitation is copying stuff. Emulation goes one step ahead where it breaks through into our own thinking and action. No one will be able to perfectly copy their heroes. We'll see the gaps and adapt. The difference is where you should amplify as your work and contribution. This goes back to the concept that it's in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are.

4. Write the book you want to read. Do not write the story you know but the story you like. He draws this from his experience with fan fiction where he would write sequels and prefer that over what eventually came out in the theaters. So we should write the story we want to read. Understand what the gap between how our creative heroes and us are when we imagine what a better argument or plot would be. He ends that piece by asking:

What did they miss? What didn't they make? What could have been made better? If they were still alive, what would they be making today? If all your favorite makers got together and collaborated, what would they make with you leading the crew? Go make that stuff.

5. Engage in analog ways of working as we were made to use our bodies to think and work. Make two work spaces if we can. Let the thinking and rough creation happen in one space with paper, pens etc. Let the other be digital where we polish it up. When we get stuck we return to the analog space to rethink and get unstuck and then get back to digital to edit and finish the work. The creative will experience a dance between analog and digital.

   
   Likewise, keep all your passions active. Switching between these passions will help practice productive procrastination. You don't need to pick and choose between these. You need all these to live a full life. Keep hobbies that make you happy too. Don't worry about how all these passions will unite and create a grand theme stitched well.

Don’t worry about unity - what unifies your work is the fact that you made it. One day you'll look back and it will all make sense.

6. The Secret to being popular: Do good work and share it with people. If you do not feel like saying everything about something for various fears, share abstracted bits. You control what you publish. You need to do good work though. This will demand simple things like being isolated and working. Do it. Surround that environment with things you love, like books, art, etc.

7. Go away from home: Find times in everyday activities to step out without connectivity. Cut out the Wi-Fi during such times. Just take your notebook and pen. Even at airports, do not open the laptop, just write and make use of the notebook. Do not avoid boredom.

8. Make friends: Make friends online by saying nice things about them. Those influencers are on the internet. They will know if you have ever said anything negative about them. Avoid negativity by ignoring your enemies. Follow the best people (smarter and better than you) in your field. Pay attention to what they are doing and talking about. Write public fan letters!

Write a blog post about someone's work that you admire and link to their site. Make something and dedicate it to your hero. Answer a question they've asked, solve a problem for them, or improve on their work and share it online.

9. Keep the long view in mind: He says three things in this section. Assume you live a long life and build disciplines into it. Don't go crazy on your creative pursuit and spend yourself like there's no tomorrow as it will destroy your life. So eat health, exercise, play with your kids. Secondly, learn about money as soon as you can. Which means pinch your pennies and live well within your means. Life can be hard. For a long time you may have a day job to fund your creative pursuits. And that's GREAT! You get the money. But it also builds disciplines and routines that are helpful. It will give you the resources that will feed ideas into your work from people you meet, events you are part of etc. Finally, figure out what time you will be working on your project and stick to that everyday no matter what. There are no sick days or holidays. Get yourself a calendar and "don't break the chain" (Jerry Seinfeld)

10. Creativity is subtraction: We need to choose what to leave out. That's the skill that we need to master in this day of information overload.

In this age of information abundance and overload, those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out, so they can concentrate on what's really important to them. Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities. The idea that you can do anything is absolutely terrifying.

The way to get over creative block is to place constraints on yourself. Do something in an hour. Don't check for sources on the internet but from memory. etc.

Don't make excuses for not working-make things with the time, space, and materials you have, right now.

You must embrace your limitations and keep moving.