Open Garage Doors

Jul 6

I forget where I first heard/read the idea of “working with the garage door up,” but I think about it constantly.

It means sharing your process while you’re still in it—not waiting until everything’s polished, edited, branded or launch ready. Showing the planning stages, the half-baked thoughts, the false starts, the uncomfortable doubts. It’s your random ideas or things you find interesting that don’t have a formal “place or purpose,” but you share them anyway.

It’s about connecting with and inspiring others with the process, not impressing them with the final product.

I particularly like Andy Matuschak’s take on the concept:

One of my favorite ways that creative people communicate is by “working with their garage door up,” to riff on a passage from Robin Sloan. This is the opposite of the Twitter account which mostly posts announcements of finished work: it’s Screenshot Saturday; it’s giving a lecture about the problems you’re pondering in the shower; it’s thinking out loud about the ways in which your project doesn’t work at all…I want to see the process. I want to see you trim the artichoke. I want to see you choose the color palette. Source.

Today’s Garage Projects

One.

I recently finished The Notebook (not the tearjerker Nicholas Sparks novel). Eventually, I may try to take my messy notes and put them into a nicely written assessment, but for now, here’s where we’re at. These are my book notes … (way better viewed on a computer/tablet, or at least turn your phone vertical and pinch and zoom.)

https://app.milanote.com/1UxmWi1C0jw888?p=O1uAhuBoe6V

Two.

I’ve felt a little paralyzed on what my website should be/look like, and I think I’ve settled on this terribly profound direction: I want there to be a lot of stuff to click on. I want it to be stuffed full of my ideas, other’s ideas, interesting facts, poems, my creative portfolio, astrology guides, daily tarot pulls, color palette inspiration, book notes, Milanote tutorials, makeup recommendations, apps I love… I want to turn this site into a digital garden ← Digital gardens will probably be the topic tomorrow’s post, unless I change my mind, which is likely.