- Mar 2024
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Writing for an audience keeps me honest.
Working in public as a way to avoid fooling yourself (a la Feynman).
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself– and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.” -Richard Feynman-
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- Dec 2022
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www.justinwelsh.me www.justinwelsh.me
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Don’t try to convince everyone that what you say, feel, think, or have done is better than everyone else.
This is pretty normal for those of us who are academically inclined so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch - after all a lot of the time what we're doing is thinking about other peoples' works critically
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- Jun 2022
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Local file Local file
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send off your draft or beta orproposal for feedback. Share this Intermediate Packet with a friend,family member, colleague, or collaborator; tell them that it’s still awork-in-process and ask them to send you their thoughts on it. Thenext time you sit down to work on it again, you’ll have their input andsuggestions to add to the mix of material you’re working with.
A major benefit of working in public is that it invites immediate feedback (hopefully positive, constructive criticism) from anyone who might be reading it including pre-built audiences, whether this is through social media or in a classroom setting utilizing discussion or social annotation methods.
This feedback along the way may help to further find flaws in arguments, additional examples of patterns, or links to ideas one may not have considered by themselves.
Sadly, depending on your reader's context and understanding of your work, there are the attendant dangers of context collapse which may provide or elicit the wrong sorts of feedback, not to mention general abuse.
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- Apr 2022
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cagrimmett.com cagrimmett.com
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Why public? There is something about making your posts available to the rest of the world that holds your feet to the fire and makes you commit. I’ve tried dozens of times to keep a private ongoing digital notebook in Evernote, Devonthink, Roam, and Obsidian, but they never stick. But making my notes available to the world in my digital garden keeps me coming back and updating it daily.
-Chuck Grimmett
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- May 2021
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doctorow.medium.com doctorow.medium.com
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The genius of the blog was not in the note-taking, it was in the publishing. The act of making your log-file public requires a rigor that keeping personal notes does not. Writing for a notional audience — particularly an audience of strangers — demands a comprehensive account that I rarely muster when I’m taking notes for myself. I am much better at kidding myself my ability to interpret my notes at a later date than I am at convincing myself that anyone else will be able to make heads or tails of them.Writing for an audience keeps me honest.
I've seen this sentiment before as well.This is also well attested in writing code too.
Writing for the public keeps you honest and makes one put more work into the product than they otherwise might.
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