I am one of millions of people who not only love the music of Adele, but who have impatiently waited for her next album. Last Friday when she strategically announced her upcoming album, released the playlist for it, the first single from it, and the video for it, her tribe collectively rejoiced. The buildup is slight, with less than a month before the album release, but the anticipation is immense.
The authors, podcasters, and makers I’ve listened to of late are all about encouraging creatives to share their work. Share it while you’re doing it, share it before it’s perfect, share it and teach other people how to do it, and then there’s Adele. She gave us the albums, ’19’ and ’21’, then she went silent until last week when she announced ’25’. (Granted, she did have throat surgery and a son in the ‘absent years’. And she also made an entire album about her new, parental life, but scrapped it because it was boring.)
When you share the great work, people will wait for it and share it for you. And, it would be easy to only gift the world with your absolute best, your final, perfected, and mastered work. But, if you aren’t yet at Adele status, who’s waiting for it? If no one knows of you or your work, it’s very easy to hide. Art, creativity, vulnerability, it’s not easy, and it’s especially difficult when you’ve created something great and your next work, during the process, doesn’t seem to be living up to its predecessor.
The value in showing your work, sharing your process, and shipping the final product is the accountability that comes with it. For Adele and other music artists, there are labels and million dollar deals that hold them accountable to producing their next work. For non-signed creatives though, showing your work, your process, and your product keeps you from hiding. Whether there’s an audience of millions waiting with bated breath to see what you post next, or there’s a tiny tribe of faithful newsletter readers, what matters most is that you produce for the sake of progress. Because, the only way to arrive at the perfect, polished work, which to any artist is never perfect, is to commit to all the crap that comes before it. And if proof of your active body of work can’t be seen, it doesn’t exist.