write your stuff and share it
This is a way to amplify your impact in the world. You can blog; you can create a wiki; you can post on LinkedIn. If you’ve been doing something and paying attention to the results, you’ve probably learned things about what works and what doesn’t in your context. That’s insight that could really help someone else!
The reasons for not doing this often have to do with “image management” - we assume that putting something out in the world under our name is always self-promotion. Maybe!
But if your stuff is good, you’ll reach folks who will have no idea who you are. The self who generated the stuff will be irrelevant to them. If what you’re sharing could be useful to those strangers, what does your lil ego and its idiosyncratic needs have to do with it? Self-publishing does not need to be self-promotion. And even if it is, I don’t think it really matters. What matters is what people can do with your offering.
A few versions of this that I have encountered in recent years that I really like:
“Here are my takes:”: Seth Godin’s blog. New, pithy, pragmatic stuff every day. EVERY DAY.
“Here are my tools”: the charming, multitalented Myron Krueger’s toolkit for startups
“Here are my inspiring artistic sources”: Maria Popova’s The Marginalian
-Eric
