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Building in Public Without Performing

Sharing work honestly is useful. Sharing it as marketing is exhausting for everyone, including you.

Tomas Lindqvist
Tomas Lindqvist
Dec 10, 2031 · 6 min read
Building in Public Without Performing

Building in public has drifted a long way from its original meaning. It started as showing your working. It has largely become a content strategy, and the two produce very different rooms.

Post the Number You Would Rather Not

The most useful posts in Show & Tell are the ones that open with a decline. They are useful because they are checkable, and because everyone reading has had a month like that and assumed they were alone in it.

Small and Finished Beats Big and Announced

A shipped changelog entry is worth more to the room than a roadmap. Roadmaps invite opinions from people with no stake. Finished things invite questions from people about to attempt the same.

Nobody Owes You a Reaction

The quickest route to burning out on public work is treating replies as the reward. Write the post as a record for yourself and treat any reply as a bonus. The archive is the point; the applause is weather.

When to Keep It Private

Client work under NDA, anything involving a named individual, and anything you are still angry about. The first two are obvious. The third has caused more regret in this community than the other two combined.

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