How I learned to Learn in Public
Tags: learninpublic, writing, todayilearned
Published: 2020-03-01 18:44:10

I've been learning in public for most of my career. It has fundamentally changed the way I learn and adds a whole other layer to my credibility. It required some patience, a lot of tiny spurts of effort, and a fair bit of vulnerability. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't hard. This is how I learned to learn in public.

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Back in early 2015 I was applying for a job at [Hashrocket](https://hashrocket.com/). During the audition I got to pair program with nearly every person in the Chicago office. I would sit next to these veteran developers as they brought me up to speed on their client project and then I'd try to contribute to these real-world software problems.

There is no doubt it was a bit intimidating, but that isn't what stuck with me. Instead I remember my head was swimming with all these tiny new things I was learning just by working along side someone passionate about their craft. I had all these moments that were something like,

> "So, you can hit `Ctrl-p` and `Ctrl-n` to go backward and forward through your terminal history? Wow, I've got to write that down somewhere."

It was then that I created [my TIL repository](https://github.com/jbranchaud/til) on GitHub.

Fast forward a little. I got the job and the "Oh, that's cool" learning-moments continued. I wrote tiny TIL entries nearly everyday. It wasn't easy to do so though. It was vulnerable to write and publicly share these daily learnings.

> "Should I already know this?"

> "Is this too insignificant to write about?"

> "What if I get one of the details wrong?"

Despite these thoughts, I kept doing it. I didn't want to lose track of the things I was learning. I wanted to keep having the small conversations that these posts were inspiring within the office. Soon others in the office were maintaining their own TIL repository. Not long after that [til.hashrocket.com](https://til.hashrocket.com/) was born. I unknowingly had thrown myself [into the momentum of a flywheel](https://dev.to/jbranchaud/into-the-flywheel-29h0). I was [learning in public](https://www.swyx.io/writing/learn-in-public/), though I don't know that anyone was calling it that yet.

I was [writing small things](https://dev.to/jbranchaud/write-more-write-small-5c45) with only myself in mind as the audience. This practice fast-tracked a lot of learning that helped me develop competencies I take for granted today. It gave me a chance to ask lots of questions. It taught me how to say, "I don't know."

Whether it is [#100DaysOfCode](https://www.100daysofcode.com/), building a [digital garden](https://dev.to/jbranchaud/the-digital-garden-l10), writing daily TILs, or myriad other things, give learning in public a try. After a while, you'll look back and be surprised at how far you've come.

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If you start learning in public, [let me know](https://twitter.com/jbrancha) what you get up to.

References:

- [My original, and still active, TIL repo](https://github.com/jbranchaud/til)
- [Learn in Public](https://gist.github.com/sw-yx/9720bd4a30606ca3ffb8d407113c0fe5#file-1-md) - original gist, Shawn Wang
- [Learn in Public](https://www.swyx.io/writing/learn-in-public/) - updated blog post, Shawn Wang