Learn in Public
Why sharing the messy middle of your work is the fastest path to real growth, better opportunities, and less imposter syndrome.
Most of us are trained to only show our work once it’s “done.” Degrees finished, promotions earned, products shipped. The problem is that by the time something looks impressive, nobody sees the thousand tiny decisions that actually got you there.
Learn in public flips that script. Instead of hiding your process, you narrate it. You share what you’re trying, what broke, what you’re confused about, and what finally clicked. You turn your timeline into a living breadcrumb trail that other people can follow (and help you with).
Why learning in private slows you down
When everything happens in your head or in private notebooks, three things happen:
- You don’t get useful feedback until it’s too late.
- You underestimate how far you’ve actually come.
- You miss out on the random collisions that lead to jobs, mentors, or collaborators.
What “learning in public” looks like in practice
It doesn’t have to be complicated or performative. A few examples:
- Posting short debriefs after finishing a course, project, or experiment.
- Keeping a running “working log” that you occasionally turn into a LinkedIn post or blog entry.
- Sharing screenshots, diagrams, or dashboards with a simple caption: what you tried and what you learned.
You’re not trying to look like an expert. You’re trying to leave evidence that you’re the kind of person who keeps showing up.
How this plays out in my own work
This site is one big experiment in learning in public. Every dashboard, real estate deal, or community project started as a rough note in a doc somewhere. Instead of waiting until everything was “perfect,” I shipped versions early and let them evolve in public.
The upside: people don’t have to guess what I care about or what I’m capable of. They can see the story unfold in real time.