Building in public is uncomfortable. You ship something half-baked and people see it. You write down a thought before it’s fully formed and it’s there, forever, attached to your name. That friction is the point.
The default is to hide#
Most people — myself included, for a long time — treat their work like a draft. Always one more iteration before it’s ready to show. Always one more feature before the product is good enough. Always one more revision before the post is worth publishing.
The result is polished things that never get made. Or things that get made but never shared.
What changes when you ship publicly#
When you commit to building in public, the evaluation loop tightens. You stop asking “is this perfect?” and start asking “is this worth sharing?” That’s a fundamentally different question, and it has a much lower bar — which is good.
More importantly, you stop optimizing for an imaginary audience and start getting signal from real people. Even if only three people read what you wrote, that’s three data points you didn’t have before.
The rule I follow#
I give myself permission to be wrong in public. I’m not trying to be an authority. I’m thinking out loud, and I want the feedback loop that comes with it.
If something I write turns out to be wrong or incomplete, I update it. If a project fails, I write about why. The goal is to learn faster, not to look smart.
If you’re on the fence about sharing your work — ship the draft. The version you’re waiting to finish is often not meaningfully better than the version you have now.