Why think in public
I have previously mentioned my intention to build a daily writing practice. Writing every day is one thing, but why bother making the information public, especially as this means publishing half-baked ideas and showing your learning pains? This in my view is exactly what makes sharing your work worthwhile. Here’s why:
The illusion of understanding
If you have ever tried to explain something, only to discover that regardless of your familiarity with it, you don’t actually understand it well, you’re acquainted with the illusion of explanatory depth. Easy access to the internet via smartphones, has made it much easier to look up information, which has been shown to create the illusion of “greater than actual knowledge”.
As research on the illusion of explanatory depth has shown, until you have to explain something, you don’t really know how well you understand it. Thinking in public enables you to see where your gaps are and thereby disabuse yourself of misguided notions. It forces you to research, deepen understanding and to reflect on what you’ve learnt.
To paraphrase Schopenhauer, acquiring books is not the same as reading them, and reading is not the same as understanding. Schopenhauer thought that it is not enough to read a lot, one must also engage with the subject matter by taking the time to reflect on it. “It is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.”
Writing is one of the best ways I know of thinking things through.
Rigour
Thinking in public forces me to finish writing articles, which left to my own devices, I might not otherwise complete. Knowing that I’m going to publish something, forces me to take notes, tidy them up, do the requisite research and examine my work for truth.
Encouraging creativity
Capturing and polishing an idea creates a foundation on which I can build. The idea continues to incubate and grow, which leads to the next connecting leap, and the next, until any gaps are plugged. It’s like building a wall, one brick on top of another, until your wall is complete.
All of this is beneficial not only to me, but also to others who read the work.
Benefit to others
None of us are born knowing anything and we look to others to teach us what we want to know. Making your work public helps your readers learn from your struggles, experience and knowledge or lack thereof.
Perhaps you’re trying to make sense of a topic that interests you. Feeling your way around it might help anyone interested gain a beginner’s understanding of it. I learn a lot from watching other people’s thinking evolving. It’s sometimes messy, but this is what makes it relatable and human.
There are people who are struggling with whatever you’re wrestling with, and it can be a comfort for others to know that someone understands what’s like to be in their shoes.
Finding community
Henrik Karlsson put it aptly when he said, “You write to find your tribe. It is crazy-beautiful to have a stranger arrive in your inbox, and they are excited by exactly the same things as you! You start dropping the most obscure references, and they’re like, yeah, read that, love it.”
It’s true that the majority of people will be indifferent to your work. But the effort is worth it for the few who will find it resonant. I’m inclined to agree with Karlsson when he observes that, “a blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox.”
Creative gifts are for sharing
If you bury your creative gifts, you lose them. As Lewis Hyde pointed out, gifts must be kept in motion, else they cannot nourish us or bear fruit. If you think of your creative gifts like a constantly flowing river, to treat the gift correctly, one must allow oneself to become a channel for its current. “When someone tries to dam up the river, one of two things will happen: either it will stagnate or it will fill the person up until he bursts.”1
Conclusion
It’s natural to be fearful of, or have reservations about, sharing your work. It can bring up uncomfortable feelings, like embarrassment, fear of ridicule, not being good enough (imposter syndrome) and so on. There’s no limit to the number of scary demons our imaginations can conjure up. However, I think it’s worth getting past any misgivings, as the benefits of thinking in public multiply the more you do it.
Lewis Hyde, The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World (p. 25). Canongate Books. Kindle Edition.↩︎