Who cares about your work anyway?

You've done your work. You developed an app, wrote a post, or recorded a piece of music. Whatever it is, you've made it. Now what? Is it good enough to show it to the world? What are the parameters to guide this decision?

Looking back at my blog, I didn't show my work. Yes, I published it on my website, but I didn't tell anybody about it. The implicit assumption that guided me was a desire to be useful. And whatever I wrote, I wasn't able to see how it could be useful to anyone but me. Since I didn't know why anybody would care, I assumed that nobody did. But if nobody cares, there's no use in sharing it.

Every day, we are bombarded with energy-draining crap that seeks to capture our attention. Most of it is just a waste of time. Isn't it only considerate then, to not add to this information overflow by not sharing your work, if it isn't actually useful?

The problem with this view is that you are not the best at evaluating how useful something you did is. Even authors like Neil Gaiman weren't sure about whether what they were doing was any good. In hindsight there are many reasons why what he did was great. But if even authors as successful as Neil Gaiman don't know if their work is actually good, how can you know the same about your work? And if you can't know, maybe it's just better to share it with the world and let it decide for itself.

If you want to be successful as an independent creator, start to seek your smallest viable audience, your 1000 true fans. These are the people who want to here from you, even if they (or you) don't know it yet. For your creative work, only they matter. So start to focus your consideration on them. Yes, most people will ignore you. But why should you waste any minute on how somebody might feel about you, if all they are going to do is to ignore you. Those that care will come. But the first step to reach them is to let them know you exists.

So share your work, no matter what.