Share your works in progress
Reasons to share half-baked ideas, especially when you're not good yet.
I have a house-guest - our former au pair, visiting from Germany. She's launching her yoga video channel, and last week, confided how disheartened she can feel watching her favourite creators on YouTube. They have millions of followers, books out, and dazzling careers.
The comparison was crippling, and she found herself pouring hours into making her videos perfect, and then struggling to even want to post them. Comparison is a killer.
I shared some advice with her that I wish someone had told me when I started out:
Share your process in public, even if you're not good yet.
Nay, especially if you’re not good yet.
Here’s three reasons why:
1. It's best to get your sh*tty content out of the way when you don't have a big audience
I started Wednesday Wisdom in July 2018, and it went to just 28 people. When I read those old posts now, I cringe. I'm glad I didn't have thousands of you back then! But there's no shortcut for practice, so I needed to start small.
2. Your journey inspires people two steps behind.
Watching experienced creators is daunting - not just for her, but for others who want to start. We can't connect to success that's too many steps ahead. By sharing her process with a growing audience she builds trust, and inspires people who are a step or two behind her. That's valuable.
3. Early encouragement keeps you going.
It's hard to stay motivated for an idea that isn't real yet. You might give up before you get started. Once you've told people, you shine light on your idea and breathe life into it, inviting investment and encouragement. That support might make all the difference on hard days when you want to quit.
You might not be starting a business, or a yoga channel, but you should still share your works in progress. If you do, you'll get:
The chance to make your idea better
The excitement and support of people who care about you
A wider sense of ownership and engagement in your results.
If you're trying to present a done deal, because you're scared people won't like you, or your idea, until it's perfect, you're missing some serious opportunities.
My works in progress
I love having multiple projects on the go, which used to be a source of guilt - like it reflected poorly on my stickability. I'm challenging those ideas. I've got too much creativity bubbling around inside me to stick to just one thing.
This week, I've shared a few works in progress with my audience. Any one of them could need a complete re-examination, fail and disappear from view, or I'd have to tell people I got sick of it, wasn’t good at it, or it didn't work. 🤷♀️ Oh well.
1. A new Substack newsletter: Current Fad.
Substack is a place for me to write on more diverse topics, build a wider audience and earn money from my writing. The support has been incredible, and dozens of people immediately 'pledged.' So, I’ve gone ahead and pulled Wednesday Wisdom over to Substack as well, started refreshing and migrating content that I think will live well here, and soft-launched my paid tier. Why agonise?
2. A secret dream to write a novel
In this post on Current Fad, I share my aspirations for a new writing direction - including a trip to Portland, Oregon this week for an intensive novel-writing workshop.
I was tempted to hide this dream until I knew if I could do it, or if I was any good. Now I have accountability and encouragement from others.
3. A battle with disconnection
I get cynical and jaded pretty quickly. Some days, I feel my work is a waste of time. So instead of presenting polish and perfection, I try to show the back-stage. I think it's useful for people who judge their own unhelpful thoughts. My inbox is full of DMs from people thanking me for this post, and that warms my heart.
4. The Consultants of Choice pre-launch
This course has taken more time, energy and love than anything I've ever made. It's the culmination of my career to date, summed up as usefully as I can, to help others live their dream self-employed life. It's taking a long time, and it's still not finished - so instead of trying to make it perfect, I've opened it to discount guinea pig enrolments so people can get stuck into the first module now, and tell me all the things that are wrong with it. Aargh!
How you can do this too
You can share your process, or your works-in-progress in lots of different areas:
Show your drafts to colleagues for their input
Launch your new idea to a small audience before it's ready
Tell your friends and family what you're working on, even when you think it's shit
Post your idea, share that video, or write that email - just click the button.
Get a boost, connect with others, and improve your final outcome.
How can you share your process with others? How will you?
Til next week,
A
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Such a fan of sharing the messy work. It’s so satisfying to look back on, have a big cringe, and then feel satisfied at how far you’ve come (and how far you will go). Got to start somewhere...
Alicia, there are so many things I love about you. I love how you dismantle the bright shiny personas and bullshit language fronts that seem to be obligatory (weirdly) for people who want to be seen as credibly successful these days.
And yet. This paywall stuff. This exclusive club of privileged subscribers. It's everything I hate. Not just because I find myself yet again in the precariat, where I'm vulnerable and dependant on state support for survival, so any discretionary spending is a weekly toss-up (flea treatment for the dog or bottle of vitamins for me?). I haven't always lived here in Precariatland, but I'm a regular visitor. Even when I'm in Comfortableland, though, I have to say that I'm acutely aware of my privilege. I hate the way money divides us. I hate that whole chunks of society are shut out of the conversation, so some feel like peasants poundng on the city gates. I hate it when it's me shut out, and I hate it when it's me invited in. So I'm wondering. I know that there's this perception that, you know, you need to get something back that looks like money or value. I'm wondering if in the subscription process there's room for someone to share their bounty, like a plus one. So someone subscribes for themself-plus-one ...just a random pay-it-forward so that someone else can join in.
Of course, this is a high-trust situation. Someone cynical could argue that a non-precariat person could take this subsidy up and make a mockery of the whole thing. But is that really important enough to stop the sharing? Perhaps there's a way to encourage integrity.
Outside my house I have a sharing table - free produce and plants that anyone can bring or take, no questions asked. It changes the conversation we have locally about value, and money, and ideas of trade. I think money is really really overrated (even though I don't have much right now). It's something we need to look at more.