The Power of Working in Private

🛠️ About this series: This is the second post in a three-part series about the different modes of working: for yourself, in private, and in public. Each mode offers its own strengths: one helps you explore freely, another helps you finish, and the last helps you connect. They’re not stages, nor opposites. Just tools—and learning when to use which is part of any creative life.

Other posts in the series:

• The Power of Homebrews
• The Power of Working in Public—coming soon

Some of the most meaningful work happens behind closed doors.

In a world that increasingly celebrates visibility and open access, it’s easy to forget the power of keeping a project private—shielded from outside influence, protected from distractions, and allowed to grow in its own time. Working in private isn’t about secrecy. It’s about space: space to think, to focus, and to finish.

Philosopher Byung-Chul Han has criticized what he calls the transparency society, a culture where constant visibility is taken as an unquestioned good. While his critique is broader, it resonates here: not everything benefits from being always seen. Sometimes, the best ideas need time in the dark before they can handle the light.

This is a different kind of privacy than what I wrote about in The Power of Homebrews. There, it was about making things just for yourself or a few others—things driven by curiosity, play, or personal need. Here, the quiet is purposeful. It’s not about escape, but refinement. The goal is not just to tinker, but to deliver something polished, something solid. The kind of work you want to hold up to scrutiny—once it’s ready.

Minimizing overhead, maximizing creation

Working in public has its benefits—but it comes with a cost. The more visible your work is, the more time and energy you spend on sharing it. Writing updates, designing previews, managing feedback. These aren’t bad things, but they pull from the same budget of time and attention that your core work depends on.

In contrast, working in private is quiet. There’s no need to explain your decisions to anyone but yourself. You can follow the thread of an idea without stopping to summarize it for others. You don’t need to justify the unfinished state of your project. You can just keep going.

This reduction in overhead isn’t just a convenience—it’s what makes certain kinds of work possible. It creates the conditions for depth.

Deep focus leads to quality

When I was writing my PhD thesis, I gradually stepped away from everything else. No blog posts, no project updates—just the thesis. It wasn’t some grand strategic decision. It just became clear: this was the one thing that needed my full attention.

In many ways, it didn’t feel like a particularly productive time. I wasn’t juggling lots of projects or creating much visible output. But I was doing the thing that mattered most. The thing that couldn’t be rushed or divided. And by giving it that space, I got it done.

That’s the power of working in private. Not efficiency, but focus. Not momentum in every direction, but weight behind one.

When you work in private, you’re not constantly compressing your process into digestible bits. You’re living inside the problem long enough to let better solutions emerge. You’re not just making progress—you’re shaping depth.

How companies embrace private work

In companies, working in private is simply the default. The reason is straightforward: they’re protecting what makes them competitive. Product plans, new technologies, business strategies—these things stay internal because they’re sensitive. It’s about protecting the core of the business.

But this default mode can come with side benefits. When teams aren’t busy explaining their work to the outside world, they can focus more on making it better. They’re not constantly reframing it for presentation—they’re just building. That kind of focus can be clarifying.

Of course, private work in a company is still subject to scrutiny—often more than in academia. Teams review each other’s progress regularly. Decisions are tracked. Outcomes are expected. But all of this happens internally, which changes the dynamic. There’s room to iterate, to adjust, without worrying about how things will be received in public.

It’s not a perfect system. But there’s a reason so much meaningful work happens this way.

A brief note on visibility

Today’s culture places a high value on openness. And for good reason—transparency builds trust, and sharing can lead to unexpected opportunities. But not everything needs to be shared while it’s being made.

The pressure to always be visible can dilute the very thing you’re trying to build. Sometimes, the best ideas need time in the dark before they can handle the light.

Key points

• Working in private removes the overhead of constant updates and public framing
• Deep focus becomes possible when attention isn’t fragmented
• Some of the highest quality work happens away from the spotlight
• Not all work benefits from early exposure—some things grow best in quiet

In the next post: The Power of Working in Public—how visibility, collaboration, and feedback can amplify what you’ve made, once it’s ready to be shared.