Why I keep this notebook in public
Writing in the open makes me think more clearly — and it might help the next person figuring out the same thing.
I spent years on the business side of federal programs — acquisition, program management, the machinery that makes government actually deliver. The whole job, underneath the titles, was one thing: figure out how a process really works, find what’s slowing it down, and make it faster. The tools to fix things were always someone else’s to build.
That changed. Now I can build the tools myself. So this is where I keep what I’m learning while I do it — not polished essays, but ideas as I work them out. Some start as a single line and grow over months. Some are wrong and I’ll say so later.
Two reasons it’s public and not a private file:
- Writing it down forces me to actually think it through. A vague idea feels finished in your head and falls apart the moment you have to write the second sentence.
- Someone else is probably stuck on the same thing. If a note saves them an afternoon, that’s worth more than keeping it tidy and hidden.
AI is a lot of how I build now — see The hard part isn’t the model — it’s the rules it can’t get wrong — but it was never the point. The point is making things work better.