When I was younger I thought that the best way to maximize my personal achievement was to maintain maximum optionality. For the me then, freedom came from never being locked into a single path.

As a result, for a long time I held a personal maxim: "No Public Opinions". The internet can be relatively toxic place one with little room for nuance, and worse, no room for growth. A place where a "wrong" thought at any point could prematurely end you.

Now that I’ve gotten older (and, hopefully, a bit wiser), my thinking has started to shift. If you suppress yourself to maintain optionality, are you truly free? At what point does keeping all doors open become a trap? Isn't silence, when you feel something is true, a form of self-restraint that undermines your freedom? Is the thing that you are really protecting, just your fear?

The more I've thought about it, the clearer it's become. Through these means maximum optionality is a shackle. But worse than that, it limits the very surface through which you can learn. If you never commit, you never face friction -- if you never face friction, your ideas can’t evolve.

And therein was the solution: I’m already using version control to manage this site. I’m using version control for my own mental map and journaling. Why can’t I use version control to interrogate my beliefs?

So I’m opening up my thinking -- literally.

/thoughts-on is a public log of my thoughts and ideas. It'll probably be a bit messy, almost certainly quite a lot of nonsense, maybe a few good bits -- but its all open to discussion. You can read the current version, live here, browse the git history, and join the discussion.

It’s like my mind is open source ~ how fun.