Excuses for not sharing knowledge

Last updated: 8/10/2021

Many designers / developers / business people keep their knowledge, maybe our reasons are not that good

There are many reasons to keep your knowledge for yourself and not share any of your experience with others. Probably we all have glorified excuses why we don’t tell our fellow designers / developers / freelancers how we solved a problem… but I said the word already, these are only “excuses”.

These are my top reasons that held me back for a long time:

1. I’m not good enough
2. What to write about?
3. Language barrier
4. Lack of advanced writing skills
5. Lack of disposable time
6. No one will see my posts
7. I won’t have the motivation to continue

As you can see these are interconnected and they build upon each other. It starts with only one reason and you can expand the list to infinity. I’ll try to explain how I grew my list of reasons and I’ll include my mind’s counter-moves too.

I’m not good enough

I always thought I’m not good enough, In fact I still think, but I understand now how important is to learn. In these years I learned a lot only by reading others’ articles, lessons and tutorials. Even if you’re not the “best” designer / developer / entrepreneur / etc. we could learn a lot from you, you just have to write it down and you’ll find an audience.

What to write about?

If I’m not good enough, I don’t know what to write about. My professional experience is very wide, but shallow on some points. They say to focus on 1 or 2 things and be a master of those. I always liked many things, and I really put time in learning all of these. The last years I started to understand that brand design and UX / UI design are my chosen domains. You will see in time what is yours, just do what you enjoy the most. Deepen your knowledge about them and you’ll know what to write about.

The language barrier

Even if we know what to write about, for many of us there is a language barrier. If you’re not a native English speaker this could really set you back — of course, only if you wish to share your expertise in English. You always can write in your native language without any excuses 🙂 We have to learn a lot then. For this reason I started to consume all the media (books, articles, videos, etc.) almost exclusively in English for a couple of years now. As my friend said I have to accept my current state with my language learning progression. This helps a lot, we’ll improve upon time, but we have to use what we know in this moment.

Lack of advanced writing skills

Most of you — who are reading this right now — probably are native English speakers, but as I built my list of reasons you could say too that you lack advanced writing skills. How could you write a successful blog post without using intricate expressions and advanced writing methods?! Nowadays people are looking for information in posts. They won’t get mad on you if they get faster what they want, without any extra intricacy. We need to work on this too of course, but a beautifully written article is like well-seasoned food. It just tastes better.

Lack of disposable time

Yes, I know, you don’t have time for anything and you don’t have any disposable time to write a blog post. I was there too, I tried many time management techniques and almost none of them worked. The most efficient trick was to set deadlines on different personal tasks too. If it works with business, it has to work with personal goals too. Well, not every time, but most of the cases this helps to get done “less important” things. Actually while we treat writing as “less important” we won’t get any of our posts done.

Another thing that helps, tell yourself that you’re going to write only one sentence a day. Most probably you’ll end up writing more but set this as a goal. The momentum will keep you writing.

No one will see my posts

We’re almost at the end of the list. When I started to struggle finding new reasons, suddenly I had this new fear, what if no one will see my posts? I’m proud you’re reading this, because that means I have at least one reader 🙂 Anyway, we can’t really do too much about this, we’ll share our writings where we can and if it’s really useful it’ll find its audience as I said earlier.

I won’t have the motivation to continue

At first I thought I won’t have the motivation to keep posting, now I started to feel the joy of writing. This article is really about (self)motivation. To help you (and myself) get started with this sorcery. Seeing others’ feedback on your posts can really give a boost. I encourage you to express your thoughts after reading an inspiring article. It gives motivation to the author to continuously put his/her efforts into writing.

Final thoughts

Not sharing your experience won’t give you a head start, it won’t make you smarter or better in your craft… in fact it holds you back. As they say, sharing is caring, but what they don’t say, it’s caring about yourself too, not only about others. I hope you found this writing motivational and it’ll help you to start your blog or write that book already 🙂