On learning in public

There’s a version of learning that happens in private. You read, you take notes, you make mistakes no one sees. It’s comfortable. Safe. And it leaves almost no trace.

Then there’s learning in public — writing about things you’re still figuring out, sharing work before it’s polished, asking questions you probably should already know the answers to. It’s uncomfortable. And it might be the most useful thing you can do.

Why discomfort is the signal

When I started writing about AI tools, I didn’t know what I was doing. I still don’t, fully. But writing about the process forced me to be honest about what I understood versus what I was just pattern-matching on.

The gap between thinking you understand something and explaining it clearly is enormous. Writing closes that gap — or at least makes it visible.

The discomfort you feel before publishing something half-formed? That’s not a sign to wait. That’s a sign you’re about to learn something.

What you actually get

Learning in public has a few underrated side effects:

You build a record. A year from now, you can look back and see exactly how your thinking evolved. Private notes rot. Public writing compounds.

You attract the right people. When you share what you’re working through, you find others who are working through the same thing. Not the experts who already know — the fellow travelers who are one step ahead or behind.

You get corrected faster. This sounds unpleasant. It’s actually the best part. Someone who knows better will often just tell you, if you make it easy for them by being specific about what you think.

The trap to avoid

The trap is performing learning instead of actually doing it. Writing about writing instead of writing. Documenting the process before there’s much process to document.

The fix is simple: write after you’ve done the thing, not instead of doing it. Even a short post written after real work carries more weight than a long post written around the idea of work.

A low bar, on purpose

I keep the bar low here deliberately. Not every post needs to be a thesis. Some posts are just: here’s a thing I noticed, here’s why I think it matters, here’s what I’m still unsure about.

That’s enough. More than enough, actually.

If you’re waiting until you know enough to say something worth saying — you’re going to wait a long time. Start now, figure it out as you go, and let the writing do its work.