I track every book I’ve read in a database, and rate each one on a scale of ⭐️ → ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

There are just 2 books that I’ve classified above ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ with a rating of Life-changing:

Show Your Work by Austin Kleon

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris

Both books have legitimately changed my life trajectory (in similar ways): they provided playbooks for building internet businesses with specific philosophies that, for one reason or another, resonated enough for me to actually put them into action.

The central premise of Show Your Work is that publishing your process (not just your finished products) online, for free, attracts likeminded people and opens you up to serendipity.

I made my first post online whilst reading this book, and now I post online for a living. To this day, my most popular articles are the ‘build-in-public’ pieces 6 months into Strategy Breakdowns and 1 year into Strategy Breakdowns which are both about the process not the product.

~3.5 years after first reading Show Your Work, and its ideas still shape my work on a daily basis.

This digital scrapbook is the behind-the-scenes process of rebranding Strategy Breakdowns.

Enjoy.

— Tom