For a long time I had a rule: don't talk about what you're building until it's done. Ship first, announce second. The thinking was that half-finished work says something unflattering about you.
I've changed my mind.
The original fear
The fear isn't really about the work being unfinished. It's about being wrong in public. If you announce a direction and then change it, you look inconsistent. If the thing you're building doesn't land, people saw you fail.
But that framing assumes the audience is evaluating you. Most of the time, they're not. Most people are just watching because they find the process interesting.
What shifted
I started sharing smaller things — a weird performance problem I'd solved, a design decision I'd reversed, a thing I'd tried that hadn't worked. Not polished write-ups. Just honest notes.
The responses I got weren't "wow you seem inconsistent." They were "I had the same problem, here's what I found." Or just people bookmarking it for later.
The feedback loop shortened dramatically. Problems I'd have sat on for weeks got unstuck in days.
The craft argument
There's a craft argument for building in public that's separate from the audience argument.
Writing about what you're building forces you to be honest about it. You can't describe a decision to someone else without understanding it yourself first. The act of articulating it — even in a rough tweet or a short post — surfaces assumptions you didn't know you were making.
I've scrapped entire technical approaches because trying to explain them made me realise they were wrong.
What I'm not saying
I'm not saying narrate everything. Not every decision needs a post. Not every false start needs an audience.
The version I've landed on: share the things you'd want to find if you searched for them later. Notes for your future self, written in public.
That constraint — would I want this to exist? — filters out most of the noise.