On Writing in Public

Most of what I write here will be wrong in some small way by the time I understand the subject properly. That used to stop me from publishing anything at all. I would wait for a draft to feel finished, and finished kept receding.

The alternative is to treat writing as a record of thinking rather than a verdict on it. An essay is a snapshot: here is what I believed, and why, on this date. If I change my mind later, that is not evidence the earlier essay failed. It is evidence that thinking in public works the way it is supposed to.

The cost of waiting

In fintech, the temptation to wait for complete information is unusually strong. Systems are complex, regulations shift, and it is easy to justify silence by pointing at what you do not yet know. There is always another detail to check.

But the people who write early, then revise, tend to develop better judgement than the people who wait. Writing is not just a report of understanding. It produces understanding. You find the gaps in an argument by trying to state it clearly, not by turning it over in your head.

The gap between thinking you understand something and being able to explain it is enormous, and it is invisible until you try. Every essay I have written has surfaced at least one thing I believed without justification.

What publishing changes

Something changes when the writing is public. Not dramatically, and not because anyone is reading closely. It is more that the possibility of being read imposes a standard that private notes do not.

Private notes let you write around the difficult part. You know what you mean, so a gesture is enough. Public writing does not allow that, because the gesture is invisible to everyone else. You have to actually say the thing, and saying the thing is where you find out whether you have it.

This is the real argument for writing in public. Not audience, not reach, not any of the reasons people usually give. Just the specific discipline that comes from knowing a sentence has to stand on its own.

Keeping it sustainable

Two things have made this easier to maintain.

The first is separating publishing from finishing. A piece can go up while I am still uncertain about parts of it. The date is on the essay; anyone reading it knows it represents a moment rather than a conclusion.

The second is keeping essays short enough that revising them is not a burden. A three-thousand-word piece that needs restructuring is a project. A eight-hundred-word piece that needs a paragraph changed is an afternoon. The shorter form makes it possible to keep the writing honest as understanding improves.

Neither of these is a discovery. It is closer to a small repeated bet: that clarity earned in public is worth more than the discomfort of being wrong on the record. So far the bet seems to be paying off.