Learn in public: the beginner's way to start
#9: You don't need a passion or expertise. You need to start testing in the open.
Do you want to start something of your own—something that fits your lifestyle, aligns with your beliefs, and would make you happy to work on—but you’re not sure what to start, or how?
Have you been trying to come up with an idea—a blog, an online business, a side project—but you struggle because you’re into all kinds of stuff, you don’t have one true passion, and you don’t see yourself as an expert in anything?
And each time a promising idea drops out of your brain, do you mostly think and talk about it, while doing very little to make it real?
If you answered “yes” to any of these…
…it looks like you’re not moving forward—you’re kinda stuck. You keep dreaming but make no real progress.
You jump between ideas, you overthink, you second-guess. Fear and self-doubt are in the way, and procrastination has become your best ally.
Instead of acting, you talk yourself out of it: I’m busy. I’m tired. My idea isn’t original—someone’s already doing it. I’m not ready, I need to learn more.
But the more you learn, the more overwhelmed you get. There’s always one last thing before you’re ready—so you never start, because you never feel ready.
And if you don’t change your approach right now, you won’t start anything meaningful any time soon.
You’ll drop your big ideas, bury your dreams, and go back to your routine feeling angry and lost.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Let me explain.
Start with “you”
Most of our ideas are fed to us now—whatever’s trending shows up on your phone sooner or later.
See what’s happening with AI?
On one side, the fearmongers and the people fed up with it. On the other, the early adopters—the ones offering the creative solutions and the hacks. Which group will you join?
You’ll sieve it all through your knowledge, your experience, your logic—and your gut. The logic tells you one thing. Your gut, another.
And you know what? AI doesn’t care. The market doesn’t either.
So stop thinking.
Experiment.
Dig into the topic, test it yourself, go deeper than 99% of people out there.
And while you learn, externalise it.
Turn your thinking, your internal arguments, your tests—turn all of it into learning in public.
Two reasons to do it:
First, you’ll learn for real—because you’re testing your own thesis, not borrowing someone else’s. After a while you’ll know what’s what for yourself. You won’t need anyone’s logic or gut telling you what’s good or bad. You’ll know better.
Second—and this is the part that matters—the whole process is yours. The testing, the arguments, the dead ends, the practical applications—everything you went through is something nobody can ever take from you.
It’s unique to you.
Your conclusions might overlap with someone else’s—same problems, similar doubts—but you got there your own way, and that’s what counts.
And if you externalise it—if you let someone see inside your head, your heart, your thinking—it can be found by a person who’s now exactly where you used to be. They might find it useful, eye-opening, motivating. And they’ll set off on their own journey because of it.
That person might feel a connection—to you and to your work. And through it, you could become friends, support each other—maybe even build something new together.
And if it doesn’t work out?
You move to the next rabbit hole, learn something new, tell that story. That’s how you build your body of work, gradually, one rabbit hole at a time. And that—that’s a success.
That’s why I’m learning to write, and why I became a beginner again on Substack. To explore myself, and to build my own body of work—in the second half of life. In midlife.
You see, most people stop learning when school stops.
They think education was the thing that ended. But the most important learning—the self-directed kind, the kind that builds something—only starts when nobody's making you do it anymore.
Here’s to learning together.
Have a great day and do your thing,
Jack