Write For Others But Mostly For Yourself 为别人写作，但主要是为自己

Write For Others But Mostly For Yourself

为别人写作，但主要是为自己

作者: Jack Vanlightly
发布于: January 25, 2022
发布在: https://jack-vanlightly.com/blog/2022/1/25/write-for-others-but-mostly-for-yourself

I started my blog originally to help me get to the next level in my career and help establish myself as an authority in the areas of tech that I was focusing on. I liked writing and thought I had something to say.
我开始写博客的初衷是帮助我在职业生涯中更上一层楼，帮助我在我所关注的技术领域树立自己的权威。我喜欢写作，认为我有话要说。

Looking back at my 6 years of blogging now it’s hard to recognise myself from the engineer I was back then before writing was a regular habit for me. It’s funny because in the end my blog was the key to unlock the next door in my career but not necessarily for the reasons I expected. I figured if I could write some interesting posts I could turn up to an interview and use it as a kind of portfolio, but it became so much more than that.
现在回顾我6年的博客生涯，我很难从以前的工程师中认出自己，那时写作对我来说是一个常规的习惯。这很有趣，因为最终我的博客是打开我职业生涯下一扇门的钥匙，但不一定是我预期的原因。我想，如果我能写一些有趣的帖子，我就可以参加面试，把它作为一种投资组合，但它变得远远不止于此。

The thing that surprised me after a while of doing technical writing was that writing wasn’t just about me explaining something to an audience, it was a tool to give rigor to my thinking. I cared about my reputation and about my potential readers and so embarking on writing a blog post about a technical subject ended up involving a huge amount of work. I knew that if I wasn’t careful or was indeed careless about what I wrote I’d not only be wasting people’s time but I could be publicly ridiculed on the internet. So I only wrote about things that I had a fundamental understanding of or set about getting that deep understanding that I lacked first.
在做了一段时间的技术写作之后，让我感到惊讶的是，写作不仅仅是我向观众解释一些东西，它是一种给予严谨思维的工具。我关心我的声誉和我的潜在读者，所以开始写一篇关于技术主题的博客文章，最终涉及大量的工作。我知道，如果我不小心，或者确实对我写的东西不小心，我不仅会浪费人们的时间，而且我可能会在互联网上被公开嘲笑。所以我只写那些我已经有了基本理解的东西，或者开始着手获得我首先缺乏的深刻理解。

The great thing about writing is that it uncovers all these areas that you thought you understood but don’t. This is especially true when you know that competent and knowledgeable people are going to read it. You start explaining something in detail, about how it works, what the trade-offs are, the alternatives and so on and very soon your internal BS detector is going off. It’s yelling “How do you know that!?” and “What evidence do you have for this statement!?”. You realize that your knowledge is based on shaky foundations and your words are worthless. So you set out to learn the missing pieces, search for the insights and fundamental truths so that you can explain all this stuff with authenticity.
写作的伟大之处在于它揭示了所有这些你认为你理解但不理解的领域。当你知道有能力和知识渊博的人会读它时，尤其如此。你开始详细解释一些东西，关于它是如何工作的，权衡是什么，替代品等等，很快你的内部BS探测器就开始了。它在喊“你怎么知道的”和“你有什么证据支持这种说法！"。你意识到你的知识是建立在不稳固的基础上的，你的话是毫无价值的。所以你开始学习缺失的部分，寻找见解和基本真理，这样你就可以真实地解释所有这些东西。

When you write regularly and face-off against this internal BS detector you either level up or go home. Writing forced me to learn things to a higher standard like nothing else.
当你定期写作，面对这个内部BS探测器时，你要么升级，要么回家。写作迫使我以更高的标准学习。

After a while of writing my blog I realized that it had taught me how to think. It taught me how to discover insights that few others had seen. It brought me to the next level I needed. Then further down the road because I wrote quality posts I slowly got visibility within my niche area of tech and that translated into more work opportunities.
写了一段时间博客后，我意识到它教会了我如何思考。它教会了我如何发现别人很少看到的见解。它把我带到了我需要的下一个层次。然后在这条路上走得更远，因为我写了高质量的帖子，我慢慢地在我的技术利基领域获得了知名度，这转化为更多的工作机会。

Now I don’t just write publicly on blogs but privately for my team when the subject is something I can’t share publicly or isn’t the kind of thing that I think is going to be valuable to others. I might write a kind of blog post about an imaginary feature I am envisaging, a new technique that can help us or how something works. Because I do share it with people I get that automatic BS detection in my head that tells me when my thinking is sloppy or on shaky ground. It also forces me to flesh out the idea, consider all its trade-offs. Sometimes it ends up being generally applicable enough that I can actually publish it. This is how my recent Apache BookKeeper internals blog series and my USE metrics series started. I wanted to understand BookKeeper better and share that with my colleagues but in the end it was so valuable that I published it.
现在我不只是在博客上公开写作，而是在我的团队中私下写作，当主题是我不能公开分享的东西，或者是我认为对他人没有价值的东西。我可能会写一篇关于我想象中的功能的博客文章，一种可以帮助我们的新技术或者一些东西是如何工作的。因为我确实和人们分享它，所以我的脑海中会自动检测到BS，它会告诉我什么时候我的想法是草率的或不可靠的。这也迫使我充实这个想法，考虑所有的权衡。有时候，它最终会变得足够普遍适用，以至于我可以实际发布它。这就是我最近的Apache BookKeeper内部博客系列和我的USE指标系列的开始。我想更好地理解BookKeeper，并与我的同事分享，但最终它是如此有价值，我出版了它。

My recommendation is that you don’t look at blog writing as just something people do to work on their “personal brand”. It can definitely help with that, but first and foremost it is a tool that people can use to up their game and take their knowledge and critical thinking to the next level.
我的建议是，你不要把写博客仅仅看作是人们为了“个人品牌”而做的事情。它肯定会有所帮助，但首先也是最重要的是，它是一个工具，人们可以用它来提升自己的游戏，并把他们的知识和批判性思维提升到一个新的水平。

It is like training for your thinking, it makes you more powerful which translates to better understanding and greater insight. Blogging is less popular now than it was but don’t let that stop you, in the end the person that benefits most, even if few people read it, is you.
它就像训练你的思维，它让你更强大，转化为更好的理解和更大的洞察力。博客现在不像以前那么受欢迎了，但不要让这阻止你，最终受益最多的人，即使很少有人读它，也是你。

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注:

BS detector = BULLSHIT DETECTOR

bullshit detector [ bool-shit di-tek-ter ]
noun.
the ability to recognize when someone is exaggerating, lying, talking nonsense, etc.:

If you try faking it on a bunch of questions, be warned—the average human being has a very good bullshit detector.