The Send-It-To-Yourself Ladder for Starting Scary Public Work
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- —
Tintin's method for getting past the fear of publishing publicly: instead of launching straight to an audience, you ship the real thing on a real cadence but to an audience of one — yourself. He set up a newsletter account, wrote four editions, and emailed them only to himself. After four, the work looked less bad than he'd feared, so he widened the circle to friends and family (50-100 readers). Eight months of that weekly repetition made the next scary step — starting a YouTube channel — feel small by comparison. The mechanism is that the fear is not of the work but of reputational exposure, so you decouple the two: build the consistency habit first at zero exposure, then increase exposure one notch at a time once the evidence of your own output has replaced the imagined judgement.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Name the real fear
Separate fear of the task from fear of exposure. Tintin's block was 'doing something people didn't expect me to do' — breaking the mould in front of school friends and family, not writing itself.
Pro tip Write down whose imagined reaction you're actually afraid of. Tintin's was people he wasn't even at school with anymore.
- 2
Set up the real infrastructure anyway
Create the actual account and publishing surface — Tintin used Revue. The setup moment is where most people stall, so treat it as the milestone, not the content.
Watch out Everything boils down to this moment; if you never set up the account, no amount of planning matters.
- 3
Publish the first four editions to an audience of one
Commit to a fixed cadence (Tintin chose every Sunday) and send the first four editions only to yourself. You get the reps and the artefact without any reputational risk.
Pro tip Write about whatever you actually want to share — Tintin's first ones were about appreciation and gratitude.
- 4
Read them back and re-rate the quality
After four editions, review them. Tintin's verdict: 'these aren't actually as crap as I was worried they were going to be' — which is what unlocked the next step.
Watch out Don't decide before you have four. One edition isn't enough evidence to overturn a fear.
- 5
Widen the circle one notch
Tell friends and family. Tintin went from zero readers to 50-100, mostly people who read it because they knew him. The point is the exposure, not the numbers.
Watch out Expect the audience to be flattering and unrepresentative — that's fine at this stage; it is a fear ladder, not a growth channel.
- 6
Hold the cadence long enough for the fear to reset
Tintin kept sending weekly for eight months before starting YouTube. By then the weekly publish had stopped registering as scary, which lowered the perceived cost of the bigger step.
Pro tip He still sends that email every Sunday years later — the ladder produces a durable habit, not just a one-off unlock.
- 7
Reframe the trade-off before the big step
Make the comparison explicit: the fear of never doing the thing versus the fear of looking silly. Tintin was 'more scared of never doing the thing that I wanted to do than I was of failing'.
Watch out Note the hidden payoff of never starting — if you never try, you never fail, and that's 'quite a nice idea'. Name it so it stops running the decision.
In the wild
In February 2021, a month into a management consulting job he didn't want long-term, Tintin watched a video about writing online and decided to start a newsletter. Rather than announcing it, he set up a Revue account and sent the first four editions — on appreciation and gratitude — only to himself, on a fixed Sunday cadence. After four, he judged them good enough to tell friends about. Readership grew to 50-100 friends and family. Eight months later, having proved to himself that weekly public sharing wasn't as scary as imagined, he started a YouTube channel in October 2021 — and quit his job by January.
→ Eight months of weekly sends converted a paralysing fear of public exposure into a YouTube channel and a career change out of consulting.
Common mistakes
Announcing before you have any reps
Tintin later said making his exit 'a bit public' on Instagram put pressure on himself that he 'probably didn't need'. The ladder works because exposure is added after the habit exists, not before.
Judging the work off one attempt
The re-rating only worked because there were four editions to look at. A single piece read back too early confirms the fear rather than testing it.
Treating the private phase as the destination
Sending to yourself forever defeats the point. Each rung has to be climbed — self, then friends and family, then a genuinely public channel.
From the transcript
“I sent the first four to myself because I was like okay if I can send if I can just send this to myself then…”
“the thing that made me do that was that I was more scared of never doing the thing that I wanted to do or never…”
“if you don't ever try and pursue your dreams you can never fail”
From the episode
Conversations with my Team - Ep #1 - Tintin (YouTube Producer)
Tintin (YouTube Producer)