Show your work

Amateurs are not afraid to make mistakes on look ridiculous in public. They're in love, so they don't hesitate to do work that others think of as silly or just plain stupid. - Austin Kleon

The above two sentences, from Austin Kleon's book Show Your Work, resonated with me today more than ever before.

By most metrics, I'm doing something that most others would consider just plain stupid: planning to open a bookstore. I know it looks ridiculous. I've never opened a store of any kind, never worked for a bookstore - and heck, the last time I bought a physical book was over two years ago (Ray Dalio's Principles, in an airport).

Nevertheless, in support of my quixotic adventure, Mr. Kleon has some advice that I think bears repeating.

Share something small every day

Subconsciously, I was already doing this by commiting to making a blog post each day. In the context of a project, daily updates are like pieces of a time-lapse video, telling the story of our progress and our challenges as they happen.

Programmers actually have a dedicated place to do this - it's called Github. In fact, commits to Github are an indispensable part of their workflow. I'm just surprised that this process isn't more widespread.

Be ok with posting crap

Sturgeon's law states that 90% of everything is crap:

It's difficult to spend less than two hours on my daily blog posts because I have a desire to only post valuable things, and even then I often don't succeed. For example, I was quite unhappy with the quality of what I posted two days ago. However, when I've wrapped my head around the fact that 90% of everything I write will be crap anyway, I feel much better about just posting what I've got.

It's ok to share mediocre work. With time and some effort, mediocre eventually turns into good. What's not ok is to do nothing at all.

And actually, when I stop to think about it, I'll be quite happy if 10 posts out of 100 turn out to be good.

Share helpful things

I guess few people would want to know what I had for lunch today or how many meetings I had. It's important to remember to share only things that might have value to others.

Sharing my meals might have value if it's to illustrate a diet plan that is helping me to lose weight or become healthier. Sharing my schedule might have value if I am writing about a time management strategy that has worked well for me. It depends on the context.

One mind trick I've found to be helpful is to imagine that I'm writing to one specific person. In my mind, I'm usually writing to a younger version of myself, who has the same interests and aspirations in life. As long as what I share is useful to this reader, I think it's worth posting.

I think this point is why I've learned to avoid WeChat moments (朋友圈). Pictures of dogs, cats, tourist landmarks, food, coffee, and so on could be pretty - but they have little to no value for most viewers in their daily lives.

Going forward, I'm going to be unapologetic about frequently sharing what I'm doing with my bookstore plan. Ultimately, it may prove untenable and the project may not get off the ground. But I'm deeply interested in it now, and it's the top thing on my mind every day. It's what I want to write about.

In upcoming posts, I'll share more detailed bookstore floorplans and possibly my reports after visiting some of Shanghai's most well-reviewed bookstores and self-study centers (自习室). As always, if you have ideas or feedback for my project, please reach out.