I’m writing this post at a time where I should be writing something else. Unfortunately I’m very bad at keeping my focus and the only way I’ve found to regain it is to get the things out of my mind that occupy it when they shouldn’t. This is one I’ve been sitting on for a very long time.
By now I have a very large collection of unpublished posts. They usually start with a great idea, get worked on for a bit to put them into good shape but eventually I can’t muster the courage to post something. I’m a selective perfectionist and publishing things is topping the list of things that terrify me. I’m publishing this one to work on that, so hopefully you’ll read on. But that’s not the main reason.
The main reason I haven’t published much is something else – my highly diverse interests. Seeing how I use feed-based news sources, what I worry about is people’s tendency to listen selectively to those voices who are highly knowledgeable and specialised. And my problem is that I care about topics which have very little overlap, so posting about passion A might stand out as completely irrelevant for someone who only cares about passion B. I’m not fully sure how the content selection algorithms work but I assume that posting off-topic is not going to make it to the top of other people’s feeds.
For readers it has become more effective to curate one’s own filter bubbles (plural, hopefully) than mixing everything into one feed. If I want to stay current on trade policy, I need to listen to certain voices. If I want to know how the meta in Hunt:Showdown is changing, I’ll need to listen to others. For creators it has become almost mandatory to pick a lane in order to build a public profile that cuts through the noise. Extroverted specialists are rewarded by this, introverted generalists punished. I’m more of the latter.
I have decided to worry a little bit less about what other people might think about my thoughts and ideas and a bit more about getting into the habit of sharing them. Maybe at some point I’ll pick a lane for LinkedIn but for now this will be the space where I’ll publish. Feel free to comment or get in touch. Or just stay a while and listen.
Philipp / Katsu