Useful Work Versus Visible Work

I did not post here for nearly two months.

Nothing dramatic caused the pause. I was busy, and publishing kept losing to work that felt more useful in the moment.

But the pause clarified something I had been avoiding: writing can be useful work, or it can become visible work that feels productive because other people can see it.

I believe in sharing ideas. Writing helps me test my thinking and build the body of work behind my company. But I had also gotten into the habit of spending too much time refining a post whose likely return did not justify the attention. At some point, refining stopped improving the idea and started delaying the rest of the work.

That is partly why I am changing the process. I still want the argument to be true, useful, and sound like me. I am just not going to treat every sentence like it needs an editorial committee.

The pause did not convince me to stop posting. It convinced me to be clearer about the role posting should play.

The work should create something worth saying. The post should help me say it. It should not become the work itself.

That is the experiment now: get the idea right, publish it, learn from it, and move on.