Coaching practices for Show Your Work
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Show Your Work, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I hoard everything until it’s finished and perfect, so I work in total isolation and only ever show the polished result
- I only ever show people the finished, polished result, so they assume it came easily to me and either feel intimidated or can’t learn anything from it
- I look at work I admire and just feel a vague awe, like it’s magic
- I sense two of these examples are really doing the same thing underneath, but I can’t quite put my finger on what
- I neatly recopy the diagram out of the book and it feels like studying, but the second I close it I couldn’t reproduce it
Practices that may help
- Share the process, not just the result
Show the work in progress to attract collaborators, feedback, and serendipity.
Steal Like an Artist, in Practice - Normalize the messy process, not just the polished result
Let people see the iterations and dead ends behind a successful outcome.
The Pratfall Effect, Made Practical - Copy masters to see how they made choices you take for granted
Reproduce an admired work by hand and pay attention to every decision — copying is how beginners see what experts do invisibly.
The Beginner’s Mind in Creative Practice - Compare two examples side-by-side to extract the underlying principle
Place two worked examples next to each other and find exactly what is the same, structurally, beneath the surface differences.
The Worked Examples Effect: Learn Faster by Studying Solutions First - Draw it yourself instead of copying
Generate your own rough sketch of an idea rather than viewing a finished diagram.
Dual Coding: Learn With Words and Pictures Together - Self-explain each step as you work through an example
Pause after each step in a worked example and explain to yourself, in your own words, why that step was taken.
The Worked Examples Effect: Learn Faster by Studying Solutions First - Set up a simple To Do / Doing / Done board
Three columns and sticky notes (physical or digital) are all you need to make your work visible at a glance.
Personal Kanban, Made Practical - Approach your own work with beginner’s mind
When evaluating your work, try to experience it as a stranger would — without the story of how it was made.
The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making - Work with your hands, away from the screen
Make a physical, analog version of the work to re-engage a different mode of thinking.
Steal Like an Artist, in Practice - Demonstrate the target performance before demanding it
Show what success looks like before asking the learner to produce it independently.
Scaffolding: The Art of Temporary Learning Support
Related concerns
- Artists Way Practices
Show the work in progress to attract collaborators, feedback, and serendipity.
Share the process, not just the result
- Copy Masters To Learn Creativity
Reproduce an admired work by hand and pay attention to every decision — copying is how beginners see what experts do invisibly.
Copy masters to see how they made choices you take for granted
- Creative Act Book Practices
Rick Rubin’s 2023 book The Creative Act presents creativity as a practice of attention — noticing, collecting, and following what genuinely interests you — rather than a performance of originality. The practices are more phenomenological than procedural: they cultivate a particular quality of awareness from which creative work emerges. Evidence is practitioner and anecdotal; the book is a distillation of experience, not a research synthesis.
- Creative Capture Practice
Reproduce an admired work by hand and pay attention to every decision — copying is how beginners see what experts do invisibly.
- Deliberate Copy Creative Practice
Reproduce an admired work by hand and pay attention to every decision — copying is how beginners see what experts do invisibly.
- Professional Vs Amateur Artist
When evaluating your work, try to experience it as a stranger would — without the story of how it was made.
Approach your own work with beginner’s mind
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.