What may be obvious to many, but wasn’t to me, was the effect sharing work publicly has on learning. In my previous post I outline how one of my goals is to get better at writing, and privately I have put a lot of effort into achieving this. What I had missed, however, was that the mindset shift in the possibility someone may read what you write is perhaps multitudes more important than writing privately.
I think that the potential to learn from sharing publicly greatly depends on the intention going into creating good work. If one moves into the arena with the main goal of not getting criticized or seeming dumb, I would expect the work would reflect that thinking. If one moves with the intention to convey a message and help people understand, the impetus for achieving a greater quality of work would also be reflected through the work.
Sharing also most likely comes with a slew of negatives as well, however. There may be an inclination to hold back on your authentic thoughts, or cater your messaging to people other than yourself. If this blog catches wind for a certain topic that I am not particularly interested in, would I feel compelled to continue writing about that topic?
So, maybe I’ll make my intention to myself explicitly now. I started this blog to help me articulate my own thoughts about subjects I am interested in, and to throw my hat in the ring on topics I find important to me. This is not mutually exclusive to conveying my thoughts in a way that other people can find approachable.