Why I'm learning in public and sharing works-in-progress

Practice makes progress

I have a complicated relationship with publishing content on the internet. This is probably a confusing thing to hear from someone whose job involves that exact thing, but hear me out.

I love taking complicated information and simplifying it and then sharing what I’ve learned with other people. Growing up, I was horribly shy and hated talking to my peers. Unless, of course, I had learned something new or exciting and I wanted to share it. Then I was a chatterbox that, likely, annoyed the hell out of everyone around me.

Over the years, I’ve found ways to incorporate this concept of communicating complex ideas that tends to give me energy into my day-to-day job. For the better part of the past seven years, I’ve primarily been sharing the things I’ve learned online in the form of data-driven articles or essays.

But as much as I love creating these pieces and I’m excited to share them, I encounter an obstacle before publication nearly every time. No matter how many things I write and share, in the days leading up to publication, I am going to start panicking about everything I’ve done. I’ll question every assumption, every data source and bit of data analysis. My (not-at-all-cute) impulse will be to completely destroy the project and make sure that no one else ever sees it.

At this point, I can recognize that what I’m experiencing is essentially an inappropriate reaction from my fight or flight response. Or, as Tim Urban describes it, my ” Social Survival Mammoth ” takes over. After all, I’m about to do something mildly scary (i.e., making something I’m proud of publicly available on an internet which feels equally full of fans and trolls) and my brain’s immediate response is to panic and bail. Very bird-like of me.

Anyway, I always end up pushing the publish button anyway and, surprise surprise, everything is fine. I keep telling myself that the more often I press the publish button and nothing catastrophic happens, the easier it’ll get to press. And along those lines, if I did make a mistake that I didn’t catch until after publication, issuing a correction is a non-ideal but very possible thing and is far from the end of the world.

So, in 2021, when Tiago Maranhao introduced me to the idea of digital gardens, a concept similar to blogging with “learning in public” at its core, I was intrigued. The idea of publishing already makes me a little nervous. Publishing content that isn’t done? That I’m still actively learning about? That sounded like a stretch. But possibly the perfect kind. After all, the things I’m scared of aren't actually that scary .

I got excited, dove deep into the idea, thought I’d have my version spun up in a weekend. Two years later, I’m still writing this in the “beta” version of my site. Guess what’s held me up 🙃

But that’s the whole point. I’m working to remember that learners need a small ego because, let’s face it. I will be wrong on the internet at some point. Luckily, psychologists report that admitting we're wrong is seen as a display of honesty . And even if they didn’t, I need to be better at recognizing that I'm more than my mistakes . I just need to convince my panicking brain about that part.

Ultimately, I’m trying to remove some of the pressure of writing and publishing new, not-always-perfect things. So, I’m starting on this grand trial of something new. We’ll see where it lands.