Field Note: draft: true Is a Pressure Valve

New format, so one line of explanation: field notes are short Friday posts — one lesson, one tool, one win, or one setback from the week. No introduction, no conclusion. The essays are the mission; these are the radio checks.

This week's note is about two words in a config file.

Every post on this site is a file in the repo, and the frontmatter supports a flag: draft: true. A drafted post builds locally, sits in version control, and never touches the live site until I flip the flag.

That flag changed how much I write. Not the schedule, not a goal, not discipline — the flag.

The reason is pressure. When the only two states are unwritten and published, every idea has to clear the full bar before it's allowed to exist. Most ideas can't do that on day one, so most ideas die in my head, unwritten and untested. draft: true creates a third state: real, but not yet public. The idea gets a file, a title, and a fighting chance, with zero stakes attached.

I now open a draft the moment an idea shows up, even if all it gets is a title and two ugly sentences. Some of them grow into essays. Some sit there for months. A few will die in the folder — but they'll die on the record, where I can see what they were, instead of in my head where they just become noise.

The general version, for whatever you're building: create a place where work can exist before it has to be good. The gap between nothing and finished is too far to jump. Put a ledge in the middle.