A Digital Garden

I first heard the concept from Joel and it took me a while, but I’m coming around on the idea.

I have a ton of incomplete blog posts and scattered ideas on things. I also end up writing a lot of guidance for dev teams at work and while some of that might be specific to the company, or a particular projects, the vast majority of those words are applicable to folks out in the world doing similar things.

Based on that, I decided to set up my own small version of a “digital garden” to capture those thoughts that aren’t “complete” or that may be ever evolving, here in the notes section of my little corner of the web.

I’m hoping to turn the stuff I write here into more organized blog posts over time. I’m probably not going to move stuff from here to the blog (although, maybe I will, who knows?) but instead, the notes can live on and continue to evolve. The blog posts that may come out of the notes will be more like a snapshot of my organized thoughts on the topic at that point in time. Maybe some notes will lead to many blog posts, each representing my updated views and lessons learned on a topic since the last snapshot.

It’s only been a shot while since I created this “notes” area on my website, but I’m already finding it quite liberating.

With blogging, It always felt like something that had to be “done” before posting. I feel like the nature of notes sets a very clear expectation that things are not “done” and may never be.

Instead of agonizing over details, running out of time and then losing interest in a blog post that is doomed to never be seen again, I can just write whatever is on my mind and it’s out there.

I am more likely to iterate on something once it’s out in the world, so this should help me work through ideas over time. This is going to be a nice gateway to me publishing more content.

I also think having this frees me up a bit to write whatever is on my mind. This isn’t going to turn into a personal journal of my deepest fears and feelings or anything, but it also doesn’t need to be all tech, all the time.

As I think about this more, I’m also seeing this as a staging area of sorts for things I’ve started working on in the past and notes I have scattered across various systems.

There is no reason not to share what I have so far and to work through all this stuff in public.