Do not announce the building site

Modern culture likes public intentions: announce the goal, collect approval and start a new life in front of an audience. Talking about plans delivers part of the pleasure ahead of the result.

You get attention, support and an image of your future self. After that the actual work may look less attractive: the social bonus has already been paid out.

It does not follow that plans should be hidden.

A public commitment sometimes helps. An expert’s advice saves you mistakes. Joint work is impossible without announcing an intention. People close to you need to know about decisions that affect them.

It helps to distinguish:

• telling people in order to act;
• asking for help;
• making a commitment;
• celebrating early a personality that does not exist yet.

It is better to talk about the next step and about what is already done:

I have submitted the documents.

I have started the course.

I have made the first version.

That is more precise than announcing a new epoch in your own biography.

A building site can be marked on the map. The grand opening is better held once at least one wall exists.

The difference is visible in the verbs. “I have decided to take up English” is announcing a building site: it can be said at any moment and brings approval immediately. “I have been going to the course for three weeks, nine to go” is a report: it requires that something has already happened. So in a group where talking about plans is the custom, the person who sounds brightest is the one who has not started yet. They have the freshest version of the future, unspoilt by any collision with reality.

The audience, meanwhile, checks nothing. Six months later nobody will ask how the course went — and that is not tact but lack of interest. The announcement was cheap and it wore off just as cheaply.