The phrase working with the garage door up is Andy Matuschak's, and it took me a year to understand why it works. The trick isn't being seen; the trick is that you write differently when you might be seen.

Three things change immediately:

1. You finish more sentences. Half-thoughts feel rude when there's a possible reader. So you finish them. So you find out whether the thought was real.
2. You recognize lazy phrasing faster. Not because anyone calls you on it — they almost never do — but because you read your own sentences imagining someone else reading them. That's enough.
3. You stop writing things you don't believe. This is the surprising one. The performative writing falls away first, before the merely-sloppy.

What doesn't change: nobody actually reads it. That's fine, and arguably necessary. The point isn't the audience — the point is the hypothetical audience. A second pair of eyes you simulate.

The thought that someone might read what you write is a much better editor than any actual reader.

The downside is real, and it's not what people warn you about. Nobody flames you. Nobody cancels you. The downside is that you stop writing the things that don't need an audience — the half-finished ramblings, the cataloging of half-formed objections, the working-out-loud that has no thesis. You start polishing too early.

So I keep two notebooks: this one, and one that nobody will ever see. The first is for thinking at the world. The second is for thinking, full stop. Both are necessary; only the first one needs a digital garden.

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