But first, why should you #buildinpublic?
#buildinpublic insecurity
Accountability
- It feels bad to have nothing to talk about when it’s time to update your progress. #buildinpublic uses the fear of being looked down upon to keep you progressing.
- But, it’s possible that you’ll realise nobody cares if you disappear and make no progress. That’s when you need an actual accountability partner. Read more: Accountability
Community
- #buildinpublic isn’t about showing off what you know, but showing your work to help people and be helped.
- There must be some things you know/don’t know you’re bad at. #buildinpublic allows you to get feedback and learn from more capable people in the community.
Publicity
- Yes.
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Use one Twitter thread for everything.
- This allows your audience to track your progress more easily than separate tweets. It helps a lot if you’re also tweeting about other topics and have a profile page crowded with tweets.
- Good for short-term projects like building a Notion template.
Document with a website.
- If necessary, consider building a website dedicated solely to the project. Example👇
- Otherwise, you can add a section of this #buildinpublic journey to your already existing personal website.
- Whatever it is, the goal is to allow others to easily check your progress.
Share what’s done, not what’s next.
- When I built this resource page in public, I made a mistake of including what I’d do the next day.
- I had planned to get the building stage done the next day, but I wasted the whole day making no progress. Thereafter, I came to a point where I had to start prioritizing the work on my university assignments, and left limited time to work on this manual.
- It made me revisit Thomas Frank’s video and remember Derek Sivers’ words👇
“Resist the temptation to announce your goal, delay the gratification that the social acknowledgement brings, and understand that your mind mistakes the talking for the doing.”
If you still want to share what’s done AND what’s next, use accountability correctly.
- Rather than throwing empty promises and mistaking the talking for the doing, specify exactly what you’re going to do and what you will forfeit if you go back on your word.
- Example
- Read more: Accountability
Just set the framework for the Notion template today! Gonna add a few charts tomorrow to track the no. of books read monthly. If you don’t see an update before 11p.m. (UTC+0), reply to this tweet to get $5. Valid for first five replies!
References
