Why it Works

Why I am confident

You might observe that I write more confidently here than anywhere else in the course. This confidence is based on two things:

• Empirical foundation
• Theoretical foundation

Empirical foundation

I have studied the careers of dozens of successful developers and have personally heard from hundreds of others since I wrote the original “Learn in Public” essay.

Theoretical foundation

Everything here is reinforced by well-understood dynamics in human psychology and marketing.

Laws of human nature

We take advantage of these laws of human nature when we learn in public:

The 1% rule

“Only 1% of the users of a website add content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk.” You stand out simply by showing up.

Cunningham’s law

“The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.” Being publicly wrong attracts teachers, as long as you don’t do it in such a high quantity that people give up on you altogether. Conversely, once you’ve got something wrong in public, you never forget it.

Positive reinforcement

Building a social feedback mechanism for your learning encourages more learning. As you build a track record and embark on more ambitious projects with implicit future promises, your public activity becomes a commitment devicea commitment device is a way to give yourself a reward or punishment to make an empty promise stronger and believable.

Availability bias

People confuse “first to mind” with “the best.” This doesn’t matter; being “first to mind” on a topic means getting more questions, which gives the inputs needed to become the best. As Nathan Barry observed, Chris Coyier didn’t start out as a CSS expert, but by writing CSS Tricks for a decade, he became one. This bias is self-reinforcing because it is self-fulfilling.

Bloom’s taxonomy

Bloom’s taxonomy is an educational psychology model that describes modes of learning engagement; the lowest being basic recall. Learning in public forces you toward the higher modes of learning, including applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

Inbound marketing

Hubspot upended the marketing world by proving that you didn’t have to go out in front of people to sell. Instead, you can draw them to you by making clear who you are and what you do, offering valuable content upfront, and leaning on the persuasive power of reciprocity and liking.

Productizing yourself

By creating learning exhaust, you can teach people and make friends in your sleep. This disconnects your networking, income, and general luck surface area from your time. Don’t end the week with nothing. This is portable personal capital that compounds over time and that you can take with you from company to company.

Intellectual history

I didn’t invent learning in public. The earliest mention I’ve found is this retrospective on how NASA scientists do organizational knowledge management. Since then, everyone from Jeff Atwood to Kelsey Hightower to Kent C. Dodds attributes their success to some form of learning in public. Reid Hoffman, who studies great tech leaders from Brian Chesky to Jeff Weiner, calls it explicit learning.

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

I wasn’t the first to benefit from this, and I won’t be the last. The idea is now as much yours as it is mine. Take it. Run with it. Go build an exceptional career in public!