Learning in Public

There's something you've been wanting to share. A project. A skill. An idea you've been developing. But you're waiting. Waiting until it's good enough. Until you're ready. Until you've figured it all out and can present it perfectly, polished, complete. I want to tell you something tonight that might change how you think about this. You're never going to feel ready. And waiting until you do is costing you more than you realize. Tonight, let's talk about learning in public — why it's terrifying, why it works, and why the people who do it are building careers you're watching from the sidelines. First, let's address the fear. Because if you're resisting this idea, I understand. Putting your work out there before it's perfect feels dangerous. You imagine the critics. The people who know more than you, pointing out your mistakes. The internet, vast and anonymous, ready to tear apart your amateur attempt. You imagine the embarrassment of being wrong. Of looking foolish. Of your future self cringing at what your present self dared to publish. So you wait. You keep learning in private. You consume course after course, book after book, polishing your skills in secret, preparing for some future day when you'll finally emerge, fully formed, impressive, ready. But here's what actually happens. That day never comes. The goalpost keeps moving. Every time you learn something new, you realize how much more there is to know. Readiness is a mirage. It recedes as you approach it. Meanwhile, the people who are learning in public — sharing their half-formed thoughts, their messy processes, their works-in-progress — they're building audiences. Making connections. Getting feedback that accelerates their growth. They're not better than you. They're not more confident. They just decided not to wait. Let me tell you why learning in public actually works. When you share what you're learning, you teach it. And teaching is the most powerful form of learning. There's a concept called the Feynman Technique. Richard Feynman, the physicist, believed that if you couldn't explain something simply, you didn't really understand it. The act of explaining — of putting knowledge into your own words — exposes the gaps. Forces clarity. Turns passive absorption into active mastery. Every time you write a blog post about what you're learning, every time you make a video explaining a concept, every time you share your notes publicly, you're running your knowledge through this filter. You're learning twice. Once when you absorb it, and again when you articulate it. But there's something even more powerful happening. When you learn in public, you build in public. You're not just acquiring skills — you're creating a body of work. A portfolio of your thinking. Proof that you're curious, that you're growing, that you're the kind of person who shows up and does the work. This body of work compounds over time. The blog post you write today might get ten views. But it exists forever. It gets found by the right person at the right moment. It becomes a node in a network of your ideas, all linking to each other, all building a picture of who you are and what you know. The people who learn in private have skills. The people who learn in public have skills and proof. Now let's talk about something counterintuitive. You don't need to be an expert to teach. In fact, sometimes being a beginner makes you a better teacher. Think about it. When an expert explains something, they often skip steps. They've forgotten what it's like not to know. They use jargon that feels natural to them but alienates newcomers. But when you're just one step ahead — when you learned something last week and you're explaining it this week — you remember the confusion. You know which parts are tricky. You speak the language of someone who's still figuring it out. Some of the most helpful content I've ever found came from people who were documenting their journey, not teaching from a mountain of expertise. They weren't gurus. They were fellow travelers, sharing what they'd just learned. You don't need permission to share. You don't need credentials. You just need to be learning, and willing to bring others along. So what does learning in public actually look like? It can be as simple as sharing your notes. You read a book, you take notes, you post them. Here's what I learned from this book. Here are the parts that stuck with me. Here's what I'm going to try. No pretense of mastery. Just honest documentation. It can be showing your process. Working on a project? Share the work in progress. The rough draft. The ugly first attempt. The mistakes you made and how you fixed them. People love process. They're tired of seeing only polished final products. They want to see the mess. It makes them feel less alone in their own mess. It can be asking questions. You don't have to have all the answers. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can share is a smart question you're wrestling with. It invites conversation. It attracts people who are thinking about the same things. It can be curating. Find great resources on a topic you're learning about. Collect them. Organize them. Share the collection. You're not creating from scratch — you're adding value through selection and context. The bar is lower than you think. You don't need to write a masterpiece. You need to write something true. Something useful. Something that shows you're paying attention. I want to address the fear of judgment directly. Yes, some people might criticize you. Some people might point out what you got wrong. This will happen. But here's what I've learned: the critics are rarely the people who matter. The people who tear down others' work are usually not building anything themselves. The people who matter — the ones you want to connect with, work with, learn from — they appreciate courage. They remember what it was like to start. They're far more likely to help you than to mock you. And even the criticism, when it's valid, is valuable. You learn what you got wrong. You correct course. You improve faster than you would have learning in isolation. The worst case scenario isn't harsh feedback. The worst case scenario is silence. And silence happens far more often than criticism. Most of what you share will disappear into the void, noticed by almost no one. That's okay. You're not doing this for immediate validation. You're doing this to learn, to build, to plant seeds that might grow later. Let me tell you who benefits most from learning in public. Career changers. If you're trying to break into a new field, you have no track record. You have no credentials. What you have is the ability to demonstrate your curiosity, your initiative, your thinking. Every piece of public learning is evidence that you're serious about this. Freelancers and consultants. Your public learning becomes your marketing. When someone sees you sharing insights about their industry, they think: this person knows things. This person is engaged. This person might be worth hiring. Anyone who feels stuck. If you're in a loop of consuming without creating, learning in public breaks the pattern. It forces output. It creates accountability. It gives your learning a destination. And honestly, everyone who wants to grow. The people who compound their knowledge fastest are the ones who don't keep it locked in their own heads. So here's what I want you to do. Pick one thing you've learned recently. Just one. Something from a book, a course, an experience. Write it down. Share it somewhere. A tweet. A LinkedIn post. A short blog post. It doesn't matter where. Don't overthink it. Don't polish it. Just put it out there. Then do it again next week. And the week after. Six months from now, you'll have a body of work. A trail of thinking. A collection of proof that you're growing, learning, showing up. You'll have attracted people who think like you. You'll have learned more than you would have in silence. You'll have built something. Not because you were ready. Because you started before you were.