Learning in Public is not altruism. It is not a luxury or a nice-to-have. It is simply the fastest way to learn, establish your net- work, and build your career. This means it is also sustainable, because you are primarily doing it for your own good. It just so happens that, as a result, the community benefits too. Win-win.

Some vulnerable people have personal safety or other reasons to not Learn in Public. These are totally valid. Since the majority of the time, we all are still Learning in Private, it’s worth think- ing about how to do that well too.

Whatever your thing is, make the thing you wish you had found when you were learning. Document what you did and the problems you solved. Organize what you know and then Open Source Your Knowl- edge.

You catch a lot of friends when you are Helpful on the Internet. It is surprisingly easy to beat Google at its own game of organizing the world’s information. Even curating a structured list of information is helpful.

Don’t judge your results by retweets or stars or upvotes — just talk to yourself from three months ago. Resist the immediate bias for atten- tion. Your process needs to survive regardless of attention, if it is to survive at all.

sooner or later, you’ll have to focus on your needs instead of others. Then you’re back to square one: having to develop Intrinsic Drive in- stead of relying on External Motivation.

Try your best to be right, but don’t worry when you’re wrong. Keep shipping. Before it’s perfect. If you feel uncomfortable, or like an im- postor, good. That means you’re pushing yourself. Don’t assume you know everything. Try your best anyway and let the Internet correct you when you are inevitably wrong. Wear your noobyness on your sleeve. Nobody can blame you for not knowing everything.

Don’t try to never be wrong in public. This will only slow your pace of learning and output. A much better strategy is getting really good at recovering from being wrong. This allows you to accelerate the learning process because you no longer fear the downside!

the other 99% of the participants only lurk.” You stand out simply by showing up.

uilding 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.

Learning in Public forces you toward the higher modes of learn- ing, including applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

everyone you’ve ever heard of, dating back to Plato and Aristotle, you’ve heard of be- cause they wrote down and shared what they thought they knew. Your learnings may outlive you.