Learn in public

The fear of being judged leads us to learn and think privately. But teaching people is the best way to learn. One of the ways to teach is to share what you're learning in public.

Sharing your learning in public forces you to distill and synthesize it so that someone who doesn't have context about the topic can understand it easily.

It also creates a feedback loop that you can leverage to strengthen your understanding of the topic.

This is the main point of [[🌱 Three steps of learning anything with Feynman Technique]]

The easier way to learn in public is to share what you're learning in an online forum, blog, or social media. Or You can build 🌱 A digital garden. Keeping a public log of what you learn is an effective way to track your learning process.

Since you're still learning, your notes don't need to be good. In fact, it's more human, with some typos and incoherent phrases.

Seeking validation shouldn't be the goal of learning in public. Instead, the goal should tap into your network's collective intelligence to create constructive feedback loops.

A quote from Reid Hoffman captures the main idea of learning in public:

"If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late."
— Reid Hoffman

But we should also use that idea for our work:

  • A side project you're working on.
  • A product that you're building.
  • A design problem that you're trying to solve
  • And many more...
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