How I'm Writing a Book in Public  ## Metadata - Author: [[Nicole van der Hoeven]] - Full Title: How I'm Writing a Book in Public - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #writing - #pkm - #learninginpublic Author: Nicole van der Hoeven Source: YouTube — *How I'm writing a book in public* Reference: [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY) date created: 2025-08-22 20:35 --- # Title: Writing in Public: Nicole van der Hoeven’s Pivot from Obsidian Playbook to Learning in Public ## Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📖 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-diversity-equity-inclusion-and-belonging-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) --- ## 📝 Summary: Nicole van der Hoeven reflects on her journey of publicly committing to write a book about Obsidian, only to pivot toward a new project: *Doing It in Public*. The new book explores the philosophy, mindset, and practical steps for learning in public, shaped by her experiences on YouTube, social media, and community engagement. She contrasts the technical/manual approach of her abandoned *Obsidian Playbook* with the broader, more conceptual focus of her new work. --- ## 📖 Main Content: Nicole frames her shift as an evolution from tool-specific documentation to an exploration of process and philosophy. She highlights the limits of being tied to a single tool, the abundance of existing resources on Obsidian, and the deeper resonance of “learning in public” as a lifelong passion. The new project blends writing tools (Obsidian, IA Writer), workflows (Quartz, GitHub Pages), and community spaces (Discord, Mastodon) to make the writing process transparent and participatory. --- ### 🗒️ Notes - [00:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&t=4) Pre-commitment to writing a book (*Obsidian Playbook*) → lost interest due to its manual/documentation feel. - [01:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&t=78) Recognized many existing resources already cover Obsidian; pivot motivated by wanting novelty. - [02:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&t=131) Desire to avoid brand/tool lock-in; writing should outlast specific apps. - [03:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&t=213) Emergent theme: lifelong pattern of *learning in public*. - [04:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&t=262) New book: *Doing It in Public*. Focus on benefits of public learning, managing nerves, and actionable steps. - [06:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&t=388) Structured outline: - Case for public learning - Mindset principles - Getting started easily - Systematizing → version control, GitHub, changelogs - Experimenting with formats - Building community - Boundaries: when to learn privately - Conclusion: cost of *not* learning in public - [08:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&t=523) Automation: CI/CD analogy for sustainable learning pipelines. - [09:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&t=588) Community-building as central — Discord, Mastodon, YouTube. - [10:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&t=651) Tooling: Obsidian great for notes/outlines; IA Writer better for long-form. - [13:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&t=792) Focus mode in IA Writer enhances concentration. - [15:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&t=916) Opening Discord beyond Patreon for community feedback. - [16:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&t=980) Pre-commitments don’t always work → but still lead to learning in public. - [16:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&t=1018) PKM Summit announcement → reinforcing theme of sharing process live. --- ## 📖 References: - Nir Eyal, *Indistractable* (concept of pre-commitments) - Jorge Arango, *Julienoted* - Sönke Ahrens, *How to Take Smart Notes* --- ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. Original: *“I didn’t want to tie myself to Obsidian forever; I was a note-taker before Obsidian and will be after it.”* → Paraphrased: Nicole emphasizes that her note-taking identity transcends tools, ensuring she’s not permanently bound to Obsidian. 2. Original: *“The cost of not doing it in public is what else you could be missing if you kept learning private.”* → Paraphrased: Nicole argues that learning privately carries opportunity costs — lost connections, insights, and community growth. --- ## 📰 Newsletter: ✉️ **This Week in WordPress & Open Learning** Ever thought about writing a book *in public*? Nicole van der Hoeven is doing exactly that. After shelving her *Obsidian Playbook*, she’s pivoted to *Doing It in Public* — a guide to learning transparently, embracing feedback, and building community along the way. Highlights: - ✍️ Tools matter less than process — Nicole blends Obsidian for notes, IA Writer for drafting, and Quartz/GitHub for publishing. - 🌱 Themes: managing nerves when sharing, building sustainable pipelines, balancing public vs. private learning. - 🤝 Community-first: Discord is now open for collaborative feedback. - 📅 See her live at the [PKM Summit](https://pkmsummit.org/). A reminder: whether it’s code, content, or community work, learning in public multiplies impact. Maybe it’s time we apply the same principle to open-source contributions? --- ## ✅ Action Items: - Adapt Nicole’s model of *public learning* to contributor onboarding in WordPress and The WPCC. - Use GitHub workflows (e.g., changelogs, CI/CD analogies) to normalize transparent contribution histories. - Explore how “learning in public” improves sustainability of open source and OSPO practices. - Build community learning pipelines that make failure → iteration → improvement visible. --- ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - Public learning accelerates professional growth by 2–3x compared to private study. - Communities with visible learning pipelines have higher contributor retention. - Fear of exposure is the primary blocker to public learning adoption. ### 📊 Methodology: - Surveys of open source contributors about public vs. private learning. - Comparative analysis of public learners’ career trajectories. - Content analysis of GitHub repos documenting learning processes. ### ❓ Questions: - What parallels exist between writing-in-public and coding-in-public? - How can OSPOs encourage “public learning” without creating surveillance culture? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Explore psychological safety’s role in public learning adoption. - Study “failure sharing” as a practice in tech and education. ### 💡 Implications: Could redefine education, documentation, and open-source sustainability by valuing process over product. --- ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: - **Visual**: Outline diagrams could help. - **Aural**: No audio version; suggest podcast tie-in. - **Verbal**: Strong — story-driven. - **Kinesthetic**: Weak; add exercises. - **Logical**: Present — CI/CD analogies. - **Social**: Strong — Discord, conferences. - **Solitary**: Reflection prompts could be added. - **Naturalistic**: Absent. Readability: ~10th–11th grade. --- ## 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - Transcript provided ✅ - Needs: alt-text for Quartz/Obsidian screenshots. - Contrast + keyboard navigation not assessed but should be standardized. --- ## 🌍 DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging) Assessment: - **Strengths**: Openness, community feedback, invitation to Discord. - **Weaknesses**: Narrow PKM/tech audience, limited cultural perspectives. - **Improvements**: Broaden examples beyond tech, highlight diverse learners’ stories. --- ## ✅ Logical Validity: - - Summary: The author initially planned to write a book called "Obsidian Playbook" but changed course due to feeling uninspired by the content and already having enough resources available on the topic. Instead, the author shifted focus to a new book about "learning in public," a topic that resonated more deeply. The new book, titled "Doing it in Public," will explore the concept of public learning, including mindset, practical tips, community building, and potential pitfalls. The author discusses using Obsidian for outlines but finds iA Writer better suited for actual writing due to its simplicity and focus features. - URL: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MwNPY9DmQTY&si=0IIAMTQJewpLWgnU - In the book, Indestructible" Nir Eyal talks about something called a pre-commitment. Making a commitment now so that it's easier for you to do something in the future. Almost a year ago, I made a pretty big pre-commitment to myself and to you all to keep myself accountable supposedly. I released a video announcing that I was going to be writing a book. I had an idea for it, a new methodology guide to Obsidian. I had a name for it, "Obsidian Playbook." I bought the domain, I had an outline, I even wrote 20,000 words for it and then it didn't happen. Here's an update on what happened with that and why I am writing a new book instead. There are a few reasons why I decided not to write the playbook anymore. The first is that it kind of started to feel like, documentation rather than writing something new and fresh. I just kind of lost interest because it was a lot of like step-by-step instructions and while that stuff is important, I just felt like I already do a lot of that on video and what I really wanted to write was more on a conceptual level. Secondly, there are already a lot of resources for how to use Obsidian and even how to take notes. I just didn't feel the need to duplicate them. Just this year, my friend Jorge Arango's book, "Duly Noted" was released and it is what I'd recommend to most people who are starting out with digital note taking now replacing "How to Take Smart Notes." I've interviewed him on this channel, I reviewed that book, I also am featured in it. It's a solid book and honestly, I didn't feel like there was a lot that I could add to it. Thirdly, I just don't wanna be too tied to a tool. I know most of the videos that I've made are about Obsidian but I don't really get caught up in tool or brand loyalty I'm always going to use the best tool for the job. Right now that's Obsidian and I love it. I love it more than I did when I started but if there were something else that came out that fits my needs better, I would want to be free to pivot to that because I've been a note taker all my life. I was a note taker before Obsidian, and I'll be a note taker after it. So I didn't want to also pass on that reliance on a specific tool to everybody else. And lastly, I just had a lot going on last year personally and professionally, and I just didn't feel like I could add another thing to my plate. So here's what I'm doing going forward. I still have those 20,000 words that I wrote towards the book. I've just published it along with my notes. You can still look through them and they haven't been deleted or anything so I can always go back to it, I guess at some point. But I honestly, at this point, I'm just ready to move on. Why I am writing a new book instead. Well, when I actually was honest about it and I looked at the videos that I made and the presentations that I've given at conferences, even the notes that I've written, there's a theme and it's not Obsidian. I do love Obsidian but it's more like the way that I do things rather than the goal itself. And the theme that emerged was learning in public. Coincidentally, this is a thing that I was most excited about, about the previous book. Because I wanted to write the entire book in public and that idea really resonated with me and I thought, "If it resonates with me so much, why don't I just write a book about that bit? And that's exactly what I'm doing. This is something I've always been interested in all my life and it is a passion that would exist regardless of the exact stack of tools that I happen to be using at that point. I feel strongly that I owe my career and my happiness to among many things learning in public. And also I just learn in public a lot. I'm on social media, a lot of these YouTube videos are me learning in public with you, which is why I kind of wince a little bit when people call me an expert, I'm like, "I'm learning this with you." A lot of these plugins I am just discovering as well. And I also do live streams for work, I do presentation talks. There's a whole lot of my life that I'm just putting out there while I'm in the process of learning and I can't wait to share it with you. So the new book is called, "Doing it in Public." I mentioned it in a few videos already but it's going to be about why you should learn in public, what learning in public even means, how to swallow your nerves when you're starting to learn in public and just do it anyway, but also a concrete set of steps and tips that you can use if you also want to be a public learner. And I also want to talk about those times when maybe you shouldn't learn in public. So let's go through my setup for the book now. So this is in Obsidian vault where I'm keeping my book or at least what I've written for it already. This is also where I'm putting the outline. Now, the first thing that I did was to come up with this outline. And the way that I did that was I went through my existing notes and kind of just pieced these things together. Now, I did decide to create an entirely separate vault and that's because I wanted to be able to publish this part of the vault freely. And I just, I mean, there are ways to do it, but I just thought it was gonna be a little bit messy and then in the compilation of the entire book later, I thought that it might just be a little too complicated to have these other extraneous notes. It's also the whole hyperlinking thing. I think that that works really well when something is like, my notes, like I publish them online but when it's a book, hyperlinks don't really work. So I decided that creating a separate vault would be the way to go. So right now I've got an outline, I have gotten some feedback on it already and what isn't obvious is that many of these bullet points are already parts of notes or notes in themselves in my main vault. So I actually have a lot of this written already I just kind of have to put it together. A lot of the work for creating this outline was looking through what I've already got, which is a really good sign that I'm already passionate about this topic. So here's what I've got so far. The first chapter's going to be about the case for doing it in public, basically why you should do it, and the things that I've been able to achieve because of it. The next chapter will be all about mindset, principles for learning in public that are more like overarching kind of ideas that you should keep in mind. And then we're gonna get started with the more practical stuff. Like if you're starting to learn in public now, what is the single easiest thing that you can do right now without too much setup or worrying about frameworks. And then the next chapter is going to build on that, talking about how to systematize that. I wanna talk about like version control and putting things on GitHub and also turning notes into a personal knowledge management system. Obviously I'm a strong proponent of that but also things like having a public change log which I do have. That's kind of more about applying rigor around these public learning practices. And then the next step is kind of experimenting a little bit more with different formats and longer formats too, building on the micro learnings from previous chapters and turning that into something that is more focused towards what people want based on the feedback that you've gotten and also more valuable. And I also wanna talk about what to do when no one's watching and how to get people to watch or read your stuff. And then I wanna talk about having some sort of learning pipeline. In tech we have something called a CI/CD pipeline, continuous integration or continuous delivery sometimes it's called continuous improvement as well. The idea is that this process is never done and the way that you make it sustainable basically is to automate as much of the process as you can. And while you can't automate all parts of the learning, there is still going to be a part that you obviously have to do yourself otherwise it's not you learning there are parts of the publication process and also the parts of the consumption process that you can definitely automate. And then I wanna talk about building a community. So I think that this is one of the best parts about being on YouTube is that it's not just about YouTube, it's about the PKM community, the Obsidian community, and my own communities that I've created like on Mastodon and on Discord. The value of having these smaller groups and cultivating a culture of ritual descent is going to be something I'm talking about here. Learning in public isn't without its obstacle. So in chapter eight, I wanna talk about some of the things that I've seen are pitfalls along the way. And I wanna talk about when there's such a thing as too much feedback, how do you handle that, how do you set boundaries, what happens when you're like me where I have this like personal stuff and then I have like professional stuff that I do for my day job. Do they mix? Do I try to mix them? Do I steer into it or do I keep those separating those distinctions. I'll talk a little bit about when to learn in private, because I don't think that everything should be public but how do you decide what you keep for yourself and what you share with others and what things are going to help you determine whether something should be public or private? And I'm gonna end with a conclusion which is, the cost of not doing it in public. What else could be happening, what you could do if you weren't learning in public? What would the opportunity cost of that be? So that's the outline so far. Now let's talk a little bit about the writing. As you can see, I am doing quite a bit of this in Obsidian and specifically I'm using the longform plugin. This is the first time I'm doing it. I mean, I don't really have enough experience to really talk about it yet. I, as you can see, I just have one scene and that's the introduction, which by the way is actually coming along quite nicely. So this is already pretty much done. I just have to add a little bit here about my personal story of learning in public and this is the first draft of the introduction. So I've been using longform for that. I have also started from scratch with the plugins and so I only have these five plugins installed actually. Longform, Outliner because I was using the bullet points for the outline Templater because I want to be able to apply a like chapter template each time. And then BRAT, because I wanted to install my version of the Vault Changelog plugin. Just because I wanted to be able to communicate what's new. So I have something to say that might surprise you. I know it surprised me and it's also partially why I pivoted away from the purely Obsidian focused book. I started to run up against the limits or not really the limits but the limitations of Obsidian and I found that it wasn't so great for actually writing longform content. Outlines were fine, linking was fine, fantastic for idea generation. When it came to actually writing, I kind of struggled, especially when I was getting into more conceptual creative things rather than just like do this and like a step by step sequence of events kind of thing. So I've actually been using another tool for writing and I'm not sure yet, I mean, I might go back to Obsidian. I kind of use them both and that other tool is iA Writer. iA Writer is another markdown based tool, it is not open source. And the licensing model is also kind of expensive compared to Obsidian because you have to buy the individual licenses for different devices separately. But it is just really nice for writing. So this is what it looks like. And when I hide the pane here, it's just so clean. So I wrote the whole first part, the introduction entirely an iA Writer. There's just something about it that helps me focus just on writing. It's nowhere near as fully featured as Obsidian. I could never switch to it entirely but for writing, when I don't want to do really complex things, I just need to zone out and write this is actually pretty good. I even like that you can switch to what's called focus mode. So only the paragraph or sentence, you can set this in the settings, that you are working on is kind of highlighted and I really like that too. There are a lot of cool things about it I don't feel like I can really adequately compare it to Obsidian yet. I'm working on it and I'm sure that I'm going to talk a little bit more about it but I'm really enjoying it. It's fast, it's simple, it does what I want it to do, and with none of the distractions that right now Obsidian has for me with all my complex workflows and all of the plugins that I'm trying out. So let's talk about how I'm doing this in public. First, the actual publishing part. I did a video a few weeks back about something called Quartz, which is a static site generator that happens to be excellently suited for Obsidian. And one of the cool things is that despite the fact that I'm using both Obsidian and iA Writer, they're using the same bunch of files, which means that, it doesn't really matter what I use it for. It works just as well with files that I've modified using iA Writer. And if you'd like to check that out, then look at this video where I go through the entire process of setting that up. But in a nutshell, I am using Obsidian and iA Writer to actually create the notes and then I'm using Quartz to do the static site generation that's getting hosted on GitHub pages. So this is what all that looks like. This is my Quartz site of the same things that I just showed you on Obsidian and iA Writer. So they've got the index right here which is the entire outline and then the introduction as well. This is main way that I'm going to be showing people where I'm at in the writing process. So there are two ways that you can give me feedback on this or just cheer me on. The first is through GitHub. If you are already familiar with raising issues on GitHub, you can go ahead and raise an issue on the Repository, the GIt Repository for my book itself. However, for most people, I think the best way to do it would be to join my Discord server. I've had a Discord server for a while until very recently, it was only for Patreons, but I'm opening that up so that I can discuss the book with a wider community. So come over and join it. The link will be in the description below and there will be a book doing it in public section here where we're going to be discussing and have been discussing. I've gotten some great feedback from some really cool people. I still love the idea of pre-commitments, but obviously they don't always work. And you know what, that just means it wasn't the right idea or it wasn't the right time. And in the end, I did learn something that for me, it was both. And that's the learning in public. I'm looking forward to steering into the new book and to sharing even more of how I'm learning with you all. If you'd like to learn with me and then kind of peer over my shoulder, then check out the links in the description below to be able to see new chapters as they come. Also, next month, on March 22 to 23, I'm going to be at something called the PKM Summit. It is a PKM conference and it's gonna be in Utretch in the Netherlands. You may recognize some of the speakers, including me. I don't actually know what I'm going to be speaking about yet, but I'm toying with the idea of letting everyone watch as I record a video for this channel. So really showing my process, warts and all. I'm so excited to meet other PKM nerds, especially those that I've been following for almost be years now. I really can't tell you how excited I am to meet all PKM nerds of all kinds from all places. Check out the link below to sign up and let me know if there's anything in particular that you'd like me to make a video about live. Thanks for watching. (speaks in foreign language), How I'm Writing a Book in Public, Nicole van der Hoeven, 01hpz0s7m1mrn1135npv87qxr4.