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Sell yourself, sell your work

(www.solipsys.co.uk)
449 points ColinWright | 8 comments | 25 Mar 25 21:35 UTC | HN request time: 1.051s | source | bottom
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simonw ◴[26 Mar 25 03:06 UTC] No.43478469[source]▶
I have a personal rule which has worked really well for me: if I do a project, the price of doing that project is that I have to write about it.

Back when Twitter threads didn't suck (they could be viewed by people without Twitter accounts) I'd use those - tweet a description of my project with a link, then follow it with a few photos and screenshots.

These days I use my blog, with my "projects" tag: https://simonwillison.net/tags/projects/

I blog all sorts of other stuff, but if I was ever to trim back the one thing I'd keep doing is projects. If you make a thing, write about that thing. I wrote more about that here: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/6/what-to-blog-about/#pro...

Projects with a GitHub repository make this even easier: describe the project in the README and drop in a few screenshots - that's all you need.

(Screenshots are important though, they're the ultimate defense against bitrot.)

I have many projects from earlier in my career that I never documented or captured in screenshot form and I deeply regret it.

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1. brulard ◴[26 Mar 25 09:27 UTC] No.43480307[source]▶
I would love to do this as well, but I'm put off by the time it would take away from pushing the project itself forward. How much time does it generally take for you to make a blogpost for a project?
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2. simonw ◴[26 Mar 25 10:30 UTC] No.43480653[source]▶
It can be as little as 10 minutes for smaller projects, partly because I have so much practice writing them up now.

Here are two recent examples where I mostly just quoted my release notes and added a tiny bit of extra flavor:

- https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/28/strip-tags/

- https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/19/files-to-prompt/

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3. ◴[26 Mar 25 12:16 UTC] No.43481341[source]▶
4. rpastuszak ◴[26 Mar 25 12:54 UTC] No.43481722[source]▶
This gets much easier with practice. One exercise that that worked for me was to force myself to share anything (projects, til, ideas, experiments, advice) daily for 111 days. Then scale down.

Compare untested.sonnet.io and sonnet.io/projects

The latter took 10 years to have a list of projects. With the former, there’s almost no friction, although I have spikes and slower periods.

Also, people appreciate people who share and talk about their work, and that can lower the bar for things like correct grammar/vocab/clear structure.

To improve my overall fluency I made a writing tool that separates editing from writing: enso.sonnet.io.

Another thing that can work well are weekly updates/summaries. But this gets harder if you struggle with building habits and prefer shorter feedback loops.

PS. I'm not at Simon's level here although he is one of my inspirations - my main untested feed posts take 1-2 hours minimum, the smaller notes/branches can be < 20 min.

PPS. I'm working on a short list of actionable tips / places to share work. Hit me up via email and I'll send it over when it's done.

5. coldpie ◴[26 Mar 25 15:11 UTC] No.43483107[source]▶
Five paragraphs, about an hour or less. Don't overthink it. Below are some examples from my woodworking, but I think they illustrate the concept. The important thing to remember is the blog post is not the project: it is a very quick overview pointing readers to the project. Built up over time, these quick overviews add up to a longer representation of your body of work, which you can use to sell yourself.

https://www.aechairs.com/2025/01/15/black-side-chair/

https://www.aechairs.com/2024/10/15/painting-chairs-with-mil...

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6. simonw ◴[26 Mar 25 16:13 UTC] No.43483767[source]▶
These are fantastic, I've been contemplating getting into woodworking and I love these as examples of project writeups.
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7. coldpie ◴[26 Mar 25 16:37 UTC] No.43484057{3}[source]▶
My rabbit hole started here 7 years ago and I'm still digging: https://lostartpress.com/collections/design/products/the-ana... You've been warned ;)
8. brulard ◴[26 Mar 25 17:04 UTC] No.43484337[source]▶
Beautiful pieces of furniture. Thank You!