Over the past several years I’ve continually had a goal of making more and better use of this site — to do more blogging. I don’t have any illusions of becoming a world famous blogger or some kind of influencer, it just seems like a sensible place to put some of the things I’m thinking and learning about.

In 2021 I posted a grand total of three times — which while not great was infinitely better than what I did in 2022 where I didn’t post once.

There were two things that helped me write a bit more in 2023. The first was simply sheer determination to write more. That led to four posts in January. Without more than just will power on my side this quickly tapered off and I only had one more post before the end of the summer.

In September one of the things that helped me post more last year was getting myself a bit better organized, but more specifically was figuring out something that was helping me get more of my thoughts actually written up. I wanted to post some content for Hacker Public Radio¹ and I reasoned that one of the best ways to do that was to script the content.

Something else I’ve learned very slowly over the years is that this has, in some ways, been a way of me applying a concept I’ve watched a number of other people put to excellent use over the years — Learning in Public. Generally speaking this is something people do by making the things they’re learning how to do, or learning about public in some way. Whether that’s posting on a blog or social media feed as the thing progresses, or doing streaming of things they’re working on like coding or even building things in Minecraft. The intent is to share the journey of what’s being worked on and not waiting until the final destination or product is reached before the sharing begins.

The public nature of this certainly provides a means for others to interact with what you’re doing an provide feedback, but there’s also a tacit sense of accountability for having put that learning journey out into the world. This can provide some additional motivation to keep going and continuing the learning journey even when it gets difficult. The published information also provides a record of the journey and what you’ve learned that you can have for yourself as well. It’s not always easy to see where we’ve come from when we rely on our own memory. Having things documented as we go gives that extra reinforcement and a reminder of the progress that’s been made.

I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to really make this connection for myself given how much I’ve heard and watched others do this over the years. This is a topic that Scott Hanselman has covered a number of times in different ways on his podcast. It’s something that Merlin Mann has made reference to on his shows and in his wisdom document.

How?

This section is as much for me as anyone else, but here’s how I’m going to try to approach this.

1. Do more writing — don’t worry about making it perfect, or long, or complete. Partially documenting things is fine, writing about things that are just getting started is fine. Anecdotes and bits are fine.
2. If they’re suitable for turning into something else that’s fine. In many cases they might exist only as a note in obsidian that gets turned into a post on Threads or Mastodon if the thing is really short. Blog posts should be common, but don’t need to be anything revolutionary. If it makes sense to turn them into a podcast episode for HPR or something else, great. If a video on YouTube makes sense that’s fine too — but don’t let the extended project prevent the shorter simpler one from being made and posted. Do the blog post, and then record the podcast later.
3. Don’t over-curate. It’s about the journey.
4. In contrast, some of these topics are more useful for a journal and there is value in writing about them. They just don’t need to show up in my public spaces. This will be where I draw the line about learning in public. If I learn something that has materially impacted me in a way that I think can be shared as something I’ve truly learned, then I’ll post it. Otherwise that isn’t useful.

1. I generally have very mixed feelings about the HPR podcast and a lot of the content on there. There’s a wide variety of producers, styles and content which is both a strength and a weakness for the platform. The low barrier to entry provided by a platform that doesn’t require any kind of meaningful quality barrier means that far more people can produce an episode. However it also means that the quality is highly variable and results in me skipping a lot of shows. ↩︎