Thinking in public is not oversharing
The difference between sharing ideas and sharing personal life.
Sharing ideas in public is not the same as sharing your life in public. But the internet conflates the two.
The performativity trap
Social media trained us to think that "authentic" means "personal." That sharing your process means sharing your struggles. That building an audience requires letting people in.
This is true for some people. It's crushing for others.
Not everyone wants to perform vulnerability. Not everyone processes through public confession. Some of us think by articulating ideas, not by documenting feelings.
Thinking in public is intellectual, not emotional. It's about sharpening arguments, testing models, inviting critique. It's not therapy. It's not a diary. It's a workshop.
What you owe the audience
When you think in public, you owe the audience clarity. You owe them rigor. You owe them the willingness to be wrong.
You don't owe them your personal life. You don't owe them backstory. You don't owe them a narrative arc where struggle leads to triumph.
Ideas can stand on their own. They don't need a human story to validate them. If the argument is sound, it doesn't matter whether you wrote it while sipping coffee or crying in a parking lot.
The personal as context, not content
Sometimes the personal is relevant. If you're writing about remote work, it matters that you've worked remotely. If you're writing about product strategy, it matters that you've built products.
But that's context, not content. It's "I've been in this situation" not "let me tell you about my journey."
The difference is subtle but important. Context builds credibility. Content demands attention. One earns trust. The other asks for sympathy.
Against the personal brand
The pressure to "build a personal brand" pushes people toward oversharing. Because a brand needs a story. A story needs a protagonist. A protagonist needs depth.
Fine. But depth doesn't require disclosure.
You can be interesting without being intimate. You can be memorable without being vulnerable. You can build trust without performing relatability.
The best thinkers in public are consistent, not confessional. They show up. They engage. They refine. You get to know their ideas over time, and through that, you infer something about their values. But the ideas come first.
What gets lost
When thinking in public becomes synonymous with personal storytelling, we lose something important: ideas that exist outside the self.
Not every insight needs a hero. Some observations are just true, regardless of who noticed them. Some frameworks are useful, regardless of who built them.
Attaching everything to a personal narrative makes ideas smaller. It suggests they only matter because of who said them, not because of what they reveal.
The right boundary
So where's the line?
Share what's generalizable. Your specific situation might be personal, but the pattern it reveals isn't. Share the pattern.
Share what's falsifiable. If someone can argue with it, it's an idea. If they can only sympathize, it's a feeling.
Share what you'd want to read anonymously. If the piece would still be interesting without your name on it, it's thinking in public. If it only matters because you said it, it's something else.
What this actually looks like
Thinking in public means:
- Publishing half-formed ideas and revising them when someone spots the flaw
- Explaining your reasoning, not just your conclusions
- Admitting when you don't know something, without making it a story about humility
- Building models, frameworks, and questions—things others can use
It doesn't mean:
- Posting about your struggles unless they reveal a systemic issue
- Turning every setback into content
- Performing relatability to build an audience
- Sharing personal details to "humanize" your work
You can be human without performing humanity. You can share ideas without sharing yourself.
And honestly? The internet needs more of that.