Learning in public

Document what you learn as you learn it. Your notes today are someone else's guide tomorrow.

The selfish benefits

Writing forces clarity. When you try to explain something you just learned, you discover the gaps in your understanding. The act of teaching, even to an imaginary audience, deepens your own learning.

You also create a searchable record for your future self. I regularly Google my own blog to remember how I solved problems.

The generous benefits

Somewhere, someone is trying to learn what you just figured out. They're hitting the same walls you hit. Your "obvious" insight might be exactly what they need.

The experts won't write beginner guides—they've forgotten what it's like to not know. But you remember. You just learned this. Your perspective is valuable precisely because you're not an expert yet.

How to start

Lower the bar. Your first posts don't need to be comprehensive tutorials. "Today I learned..." is a perfectly valid format. So is "I don't understand X yet, but here's what I think so far..."

The consistency matters more than the polish.