Deep Work or Show Your Work?
The books Deep Work by Cal Newport and Show Your Work by Austin Kleon are at odds with each other.
Deep Work advocates locking things down and going distraction free to focus on your work. While Show Your Work advocates giving out continual updates on your work and making use of social media to do so.
Cal would say that the time spent promoting your work on social media, is time better spent doing work or improving your skills. It’s basically a distraction. And in his book, he quotes some people who actually benefited from avoiding social media and focusing on deep work.
Austin would say, if you want your work to be discovered, then you need to keep sharing updates on it. Usage of social media is one of the best ways to do that. Actually his book gives out great advice on what to post on social media. No, he advises against posting about your life or documenting your life on social media. Rather, he suggests posting about what you're working on. Show your work, not show your life.
What confounds me is that both Cal and Austin are successful in their own right, even if they take different approaches to getting their work noticed.
So where does that leave us? Which approach do we follow?
I think that both of them wrote great books, but they seem to be meant for different audiences.
Cal's book seems to be targeted more at knowledge workers and creators who need time to produce great work.
Austin's book on the other hand, seems to be geared more towards entrepreneurs or people who need the most visiblity to sell their products, or to get paid for their talents and services. That’s why you need to show your work.
So I suppose the answer to the question of which approach to follow, depends on what kind of work you do. I'm leaning more toward Cal's approach of deep work. What about you?