Publishing over Perfection

There’s a cycle I’ve noticed in publishing my own thoughts.

Initial interest starts pretty high (otherwise why write about it?)

This rises steadily as I wrap my hands around the idea, feeling it’s edges. Gathering adjacent thoughts and ideas. Building a holistic view that explains in explicit terms of what I instrinsically feel is true.

Once I draft these thoughts, the loop feels complete. I’ve understood the topic, and communicated it. Of course there is much deeper I can go, but I’ve reached a natural milestone. In seeing my demonstration of understanding, the concept no longer holds power over my interest, which drops close to 0.

The tendency for me is to discard the draft at this point. It no longer feels novel to me, so why would it feel novel to anyone else?

But I’ve noticed another cycle too. Stumble across the draft weeks or months later, and I find a lot of value there. Things I forgot I had considered. Things I didn’t see before while I was in a flow state.

Now it holds a lot of new value for me, and I realize I should have published it in the moment. Now I’ve missed out on the some of the opportunity for others to see what I so clearly see now.

The effect of a culture & social platforms that encourage projecting perfection as a default state reinforces the hesitancy to publish.

I don’t know a good solution for this, other than to keep it in mind and try to press publish.