Secrets

"Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides." —André Malraux

Before you get the wrong impression, this essay is not about why you should live a life of secrecy, nor am I encouraging you to lie. This is about why you should delay the gratification that you get from sharing your work and life with others.

In high school, I was someone who liked to preach all of my grandiose ambitions and dreams for everyone to hear. For example, in my senior year, I told all my friends that I was "definitely" getting into UC Berkeley for CS, or speak openly about cool projects that I was thinking about, but hadn't yet started. Being someone who was seen as relatively smart by my peers, I received a lot of support and affirmation from others. Yet, I rarely followed through on a lot of these claims; you know why? Because I felt like I had already achieved them.

I got so much gratification from sharing my ideas and goals with everyone else that I lost interest in actually achieving them. Looking back now, I wasn't saying these things because I truly wanted to achieve them, but because I wanted to feel the gratification that would come from sharing things with others.

There is a fine line between sharing something to boost your own ego and sharing something to create value. Sometimes, both of them can look and feel like the same thing, especially to you. Having the self awareness to call yourself out on your own bullshit, or forcing yourself to actually go out and do what you said you would is hard when you've become accustomed to lying to yourself.

Keep new developments in your work and life a secret. At least until you have done enough to warrant letting others know about it. You'll find you actually get more done and don't have the looming pressure of other peoples opinions. Don't take my word for it, numerous studies have found that telling others an idea releases an impulse of dopamine equivalent to actually bringing that idea to life. For almost everyone, this dissuades them from continuing to work on their ideas, just as it did to me.

This philosophy is stoic-esque. Put your head down, do the work, and then share. When you share, don't boast, do it in a way that creates value for others and/or for what you created. If people love it, then that's awesome, you'll probably get some amazing feedback. If they don't, great, you likely learned a few things and actually did what you set out to do, which is more than what many people can say.

In the silence of your hard work, let your actions echo louder than your words ever could.