Yay, my first public fragment 🎉
The purpose of what I call fragments is pretty simple: to lower the barrier for starting to write about something and allow it to be open-ended. That is, you don't have to define or categorize what it is you're writing before you start. Just start - and time will show.
I'm a strong believer in the famous quote by Leslie Lamport:
"If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking."
(don't know the source but it's often referred to by prominent thinkers) and writing has always been central to what I do. I have written loads of (highly technical as well as non-technical) material in my profession, shared internally or for partners and customers, but at the same time, I've (so far) written little in public.
I have a scattered graveyard of half-finished blog posts that I've never published. Primarily because I've never given it much priority, but surely also due to a large dose of perfectionism and imposter syndrome. ..."Is there really anything novel about this?", "Who cares, really?", or "I should just research this part a bit deeper first, for it to be ready."...
That same part of me that has held me back from publishing stuff before argues that this is just very healthy; there is so much low-quality content out there, "don't contribute to the noise!". But the downside is that not sharing any thoughts and ideas publicly is a missed opportunity to connect with other people. Every now and then I find myself in a conversation where I realize "Oh, I actually scribbled down some ideas about this", but I don't recall where and have nowhere to point the person.
So by calling it a fragment I'm mentally priming myself to lower the barrier to sharing it publicly.
The rules for fragments are simple:
- It is (related to) something I care about,
- It has a fair chance of being interesting for at least one other person,
- It can be updated arbitrarily, there is no minimal or final version. (I plan to share the source history for exposing how the fragments evolve.)
But again, I have no idea where this will go. And that's kind of the point, I'm starting anyway.