I have always been terrible about building in public. While digging through Figma drafts recently, I realized how many ideas I’ve had over the years that have been built to ~90% completion, or worse, I’ve started to execute, only for impostor syndrome or burnout to win. I would never let this happen with client work, but when this happens with “less important” personal work, the mental roadblocks are usually enough to send me back to square one.
I’m not usually one to say my work is “great” by any means, but the sheer number of drafts I found with potential was sobering to say the least. It got me thinking. Everything is a muscle that requires repetition to grow. How could I build my “build in public” muscle without burning out?
Enter Roadmap. Within my circles, I’ll admit I’m known for my… unorthodox… setups and workflows. Any time I share snippets of work with software or workflow bits visible, I’m always bombarded by questions, and they’re not typically about the work I’m doing.
The answer to some of those questions comes in the form of an oddly minimalist, MIT-licensed Obsidian vault template. My personal Roadmap vault. It’s the primary driver for organizing my work, managing my time effectively, and keeping me aligned with my core values, goals, and guiding principles. It’s a hype doc, personal documentation, digital Bullet Journal, and file storage system, all rolled into one.
Lucky enough for me, it feels like it’s also the answer to my own question. Is this the key to start building the “build in public” muscle? Only one way to find out.
Today’s building in public is comprised of two parts: the template, and the demo.
The Template
I started off by biting the bullet. I made the repo public. I enjoy when others share their structures and processes, so it’s about time I started doing the same. My files are your playground, totally free to tinker with.
The part of building in public that’s always felt gross to me was the sales part. Back in my early Notion template creating days, my mockups and listings lived in a Figma file entitled “Digital Goods Peddling”. It’s always felt scummy to me, something like “Look at this thing I made, you should now pay me for it”. This time around, I’m starting smaller.
The repo is publicly available. You’re free to do whatever with the files you download, so long as your intentions align with what the MIT license entails. I’m not asking for a single penny for this vault template. Based on recommendations from friends, I’ve added a Ko-Fi link for sponsorship opportunity, with zero expectation. If you feel so inclined, toss a coin or two to your witcher—it’s immensely appreciated and funds the next open source project.
Try the template for yourself here
The Demo
Besides setting up a Ko-Fi page, making the demo repo public has been the most unsettling part of this project to date. It requires a vulnerability that I always opted to shy away from. No longer. Certain files get left out for including too much sensitive personal information, but the vast majority gets published. The only other exception is that my EOD reflections are done analog, and I have no intention of digitizing my analog notebooks anymore.
The demo is available to explore. Dig through the files to see how I use certain files, or implement certain systems and protocols. The vault I make public is identical in structure to the public vault template, with my blog post folder the only addition.
There’s a large part of me that is unsettled by the fact that those hustle culture “gurus” are right about something: action kills fear. Sitting at my desk at the end of the day, writing this post before heading to bed, it’s eerily peaceful. The world didn’t end. It didn’t end when I added a Ko-Fi link to the above paragraph, it didn’t end when I made the repos public, and I don’t anticipate it will end when I publish this post. Something tells me it won’t end tomorrow, either, when I do it all over again. Day after day, one post at a time, one commit at a time, I don’t think the world will end. I think it will just grow my “build in public” muscle.