The Daily Dispatch

Kleon's argument in Show Your Work! is that big launches are a poor way to become known. They come rarely, they carry too much pressure, and when one falls flat there is nothing else to show. A daily dispatch turns the same effort into many small, low-risk pieces. Each one takes minutes: a photograph of today's draft, a sentence about a mistake, a useful passage from a book with your own note on it. No single post matters much, and that is the point; the value lies in the accumulation. Over a year the small pieces add up to a body of work that shows what you care about, how you think and that you keep going, which is more persuasive than any one polished launch. Kleon also suggests a rhythm that keeps the dispatch from turning into noise: share the small daily pieces, then gather the best of them into something larger, such as a monthly round-up or a longer article. Two limits keep the practice honest. Share what is useful or interesting to someone else, not mere proof that you were busy, and keep it small enough to sustain on your worst day.