What to write and publish?
A very underrated German thinker Georg Christoph Lichtenberg noted the following in one of his notebooks:
What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed.
This got me thinking:
- How have I been doing it?
- Should I follow Lichtenberg’s method to organize my thoughts, conversations, writings and publishings?
What I observed in me was:
- What concerns me alone, I have been thinking, roughly noting in a paper or in a note-app and publishing on Medium
- What concerns my friends, I am either writing, telling them or publishing on Medium
- What can be of interest to only a limited public, I have been writing and publishing on Medium
- What the world ought to know, I have been publishing on my blog and on Medium
I am immediately conscious of the fact that I have been writing unnecessary stuff on Medium (from Lichetenberg’s perspective). I wonder if this is the reason why no one reads my works!
Okay then, I am convinced of the idea that I shouldn’t be publishing things that concern only me and my friends on Medium. This sounds reasonable and valid enough: Public platforms have public in them. Why should I corrode them with my personal musings! Not that they care. These platforms are the modern bulletin-boards for humanity.
But what about the third point — interest to only a limited public? What about all those publishing-guides that tell me to focus on a niche? What about all those social media where we are supposed to spit everything we have sensed, thought, felt and known?
I think the world would be a better place if everyone followed Lichetenberg’s formula, especially the ones who narcissistically vomit in social media. We would be saved from information overload and bobble and a lot of people would have a world of amazing information opened to them.
But a lot has changed since Lichtenberg. Especially due to the presence of this thing called internet and its corrupted child social-media. Hence, we need some modification. One aspect is in regards to ideas relevant to only the limited public: I think we should publish them too.
So I have modified the Lichtenberg quote as follows:
What concerns me alone I think and note, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write and publish at a particular place with particular tags, and what the world ought to know is published and shared as much as I can.
