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Heard from a few folks that they procrastinate publishing because they want to make sure it’s good enough and I totally get it, I worry about that too. But I’ve gotten pretty good at deciding enough is enough and going ahead anyway so here’s a thread with things I don’t like but decided were fine.

28/12/25, 9:14 am5 reposts57 likes

@simonwillison.net

I like to remind people that nobody else will ever know how good the thing you WANTED to publish was, so all of those flaws that stand out to you are invisible to them (And you just posted them all here for everyone to see, with screenshots!)

@simonwillison.net

My favorite advice for blogging remains that you should hit publish while you are still actively unhappy with what you have written, because the only alternative is a huge folder full of drafts and never publishing anything at all

@andybudd.bsky.social

Good advice. My main use for AI has been to help turn those unedited stream of consciousness drafts into something publishable.

I have folders full of drafts

@eastmad.bsky.social

The problem with that is that you look a day later, and wonder if you really should have called that minister a cunt.

@jukkan.bsky.social

Also, if you make your blog posts too complete and aim to address every possible question - there will be nothing left to comment on. It's far better to push something non-polished out there, get people to engage with it and be open to feedback and new perspectives. That's kinda the whole point.

I have the opposite problem. I want to publish something as soon as it's ready, but I know it's crap. I have to force myself to read it again and fix it. Ideally, hold again until the day after to see what I missed and only post then. When I don't, I always find horrible stuff right after posting.

I think it's easy to lose sight of the "logging" metaphor that blogging came from. Logging in-process knowledge acquisition candidly is largely the opposite of how schooling conditions us. In blogging, it feels like you can develop theses better to have an "A" paper, but constraints differ totally.

daniel r(ooooooh) at jsconf mx 🇲🇽

⬆️ life advice

@fredpullin.bsky.social

so guilty

@cynthiadunlop.bsky.social

@simonwillison.net We've been collecting expert tech bloggers' experiences and advice at writethatblog.substack.com Could we share your response to our standard questions (or do something custom for you)?

@simonwillison.net

Yes, would love to do that

Redowan Delowar

Oh this is such a honking great idea 📣

@cynthiadunlop.bsky.social

For example, writethatblog.substack.com/p/sam-rose-o...

writethatblog.substack.comSam Rose on Technical BloggingThe story behind Sam's masterful interactive visualizations

"Ugly action beats unfinished perfection" (Source unknown)

@dmenis.bsky.social

Ai generated image? The rungs on the unfinished perfect ladder aren't that perfect. 😅

Extremely good way to word it. I’ve been told to be kinder to myself, or that I’m too harsh a critic of my own work. But this all comes from a place of genuine desire to improve, and I’m very happy with the trajectory of my work. 😊

@simonwillison.net

The quality of the stuff you put out is an inspiration to me I'm a huge fan of tiny incremental improvements - if you try to ensure that everything you put out is just a tiny bit better then what came before it - and you put out a lot of stuff - that effect really compounds!

Right back at you. I don’t know how you publish as much as you do, it’s prolific. And I couldn’t agree more. I look back and I see myself improving with every post. Just gotta keep turning the handle, learning new things, striving for that little bit more each time.

Starting with ngrok.com/blog/prompt-.... The scales on these axes is very different and some folks called this a crime against data visualisation, and I get it. But when they have the same scale it’s harder to see that they follow very similar trends. There was probably a better way to do this.

I really dislike these SVGs. I wanted something to help ground the reader throughout the post, help them understand where we’re up to. I thought of it as a map. I made this quickly very early in the post’s life and never really got around to making it better.

This animation exists only to look good and doesn’t really add anything to the explanation. I spent too much time on it for the purpose it serves. It also animates in when it enters the viewport then it’s not obvious you can click on it to play it again. All round very meh.

God I spent too long on this component. By far the most complex one in the post. The way I’m scrolling the page a second or two after you hit send to make sure it’s fully in the viewport is really ick but I didn’t have any better ideas. I do like this one visually, but that forced scroll haunts me.

Redowan Delowar

Another thing to highlight is that these days, I’m incredibly distrustful of LLM-generated content. I tend to gravitate toward blogs that sound less polished and more personal. I really don’t want to spend more time reading something than it took the author to write or generate it.