Ah, my topic of specialty. I've been doing this for a decade, but only figured it out over the past ~5 years.
Pros:
- Inbound Marketing: You not only are able to bring part of your work with you between jobs, but your thinking and learning in public demonstrates your interest, expertise, and growth over time such that it tends to attract jobs and other opportunities to you (including opps that are not formally open to everyone yet)
- Bloom's Taxonomy: Retain more of what you learn by writing it down in your own words rather than simply holding it in your head
- The 1% Rule: 99% of people lurk, less than 1% make content, you stand out in your field simply by saying something
- Cunningham's Law: “The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.” Being publicly wrong attracts teachers, as long as you don’t do it in such
high quantity that people give up on you altogether. Conversely, once
you’ve gotten something wrong in public, you never forget it.
- Positive Reinforcement: Building in a social feedback mechanism to
your learning encourages more learning. As you build a track record
and embark on more ambitious projects with implicit future promise,
your public activity becomes a Commitment Device.
- It takes extra effort to write down something you're already thinking. E.g. it can feel like pure overhead to write down notes on a conversation you just had or talk you just saw. However if you agree that you shouldnt be optimizing for quantity of content consumed, rather the quantity and quality of what you *retain*, then the optimal write-read ratio is higher than 0 (I think 10-20% is a good range).
- You may get things wrong, sometimes embarrassingly so. Separate your (past) thinking and writing from your identity. http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
- You may hurt people's feelings by omitting their contributions, saying something you didn't mean, or saying something you regret. A bad enough case can lose you friendships and opportunities forever. So you'll have to learn how to filter what you say through the lens of other people's egos and your own fog of ignorance. Especially be careful about thinking in public about confidential work stuff or other private secrets, and err on the side of caution when it involves other people.
- Some people might see your mistakes and judge you harshly since they know better. This can be mitigated by demonstrating both intent and ability to learn quickly over time and respond well to criticism.
Pros:
- Inbound Marketing: You not only are able to bring part of your work with you between jobs, but your thinking and learning in public demonstrates your interest, expertise, and growth over time such that it tends to attract jobs and other opportunities to you (including opps that are not formally open to everyone yet)
- Bloom's Taxonomy: Retain more of what you learn by writing it down in your own words rather than simply holding it in your head
- The 1% Rule: 99% of people lurk, less than 1% make content, you stand out in your field simply by saying something
- Cunningham's Law: “The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.” Being publicly wrong attracts teachers, as long as you don’t do it in such high quantity that people give up on you altogether. Conversely, once you’ve gotten something wrong in public, you never forget it.
- Positive Reinforcement: Building in a social feedback mechanism to your learning encourages more learning. As you build a track record and embark on more ambitious projects with implicit future promise, your public activity becomes a Commitment Device.
- Productizing Yourself: well, Naval said it best so I'll just drop a link https://nav.al/productize-yourself
Cons:
- It takes extra effort to write down something you're already thinking. E.g. it can feel like pure overhead to write down notes on a conversation you just had or talk you just saw. However if you agree that you shouldnt be optimizing for quantity of content consumed, rather the quantity and quality of what you *retain*, then the optimal write-read ratio is higher than 0 (I think 10-20% is a good range).
- You may get things wrong, sometimes embarrassingly so. Separate your (past) thinking and writing from your identity. http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
- You may hurt people's feelings by omitting their contributions, saying something you didn't mean, or saying something you regret. A bad enough case can lose you friendships and opportunities forever. So you'll have to learn how to filter what you say through the lens of other people's egos and your own fog of ignorance. Especially be careful about thinking in public about confidential work stuff or other private secrets, and err on the side of caution when it involves other people.
- Some people might see your mistakes and judge you harshly since they know better. This can be mitigated by demonstrating both intent and ability to learn quickly over time and respond well to criticism.
Source: I've written a popular essay (https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/), book (https://learninpublic.org/v1-principles-learn-in-public.pdf), and done some talks and podcasts (https://www.swyx.io/ideas?filter=learn%20in%20public) about this. You can check my post history for how I do it.