I've spent years writing articles — and almost as many years not publishing them.
Not because I had nothing to say. I had everything to say. Every time I solved a hard problem or finally understood something deeply — I wrote it down. That feeling of a light turning on after days of confusion? I wanted to give that to someone else.
But perfectionism had other plans.
Drafts Everywhere
Medium. DEV Community. Google Docs. Chunks of paper stuffed inside books, sitting at the bottom of my laptop bag, falling out when I least expect it.
But I never wanted to publish something incomplete. No article without proper diagrams. No explanation that left gaps. It had to be whole — or it wasn't going out.
So every draft just sat there — waiting for the perfect diagram, the perfect depth of knowledge, the feeling that I truly understood every part of the topic before I had the right to explain any of it.
Three years of "not yet."
What I Was Perfectionist About
Not grammar. Not formatting. Something deeper.
I wanted to make it easy to understand — the kind of explanation where someone finishes and thinks why didn't anyone explain it like this before? I wanted great visualizations that make things clear. I wanted to cover everything so no one gets lost halfway.
Underneath all of that was a quiet fear: the fear of not being good enough. Of not actually helping someone the way they needed.
The Thing Jack Harrington Says
Jack Harrington says it in almost every video:
Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
At some point I actually heard what he was saying — if you understand something well enough, you can make it feel light for someone else. The complexity is real. The explanation doesn't have to be heavy.
And he uses tools. He doesn't spend three days hand-crafting a perfect diagram when ChatGPT can make a clear one in five minutes.
So I started doing the same. And suddenly the wall was gone.
The goal was never to be perfect. It was always that moment — when something clear for someone. A perfect article in a draft helps nobody. An honest one out in the world might change how someone thinks forever.
I Cut the Code. I Kept the Story.
I stopped trying to cover everything. Instead I focused on the problem-solution mindset — don't just show the answer, show the journey. The steps, the wrong turns, how the solution was actually found.
That's how I learn best. Not from clean final answers — from watching someone walk the path. You can see it in my React series: articles that don't just explain how React works, but trace why each piece exists. The journey, not just the destination.
What Finally Got Published
Two series. Many articles. Years of drafts — finally out.
⚛️ How React Works Under the Hood — 9 parts. From why Fiber exists to Server Components and hydration. The series I most wanted to find when I was learning and never could.
🔧 Extending bpmn-io Form-JS Beyond Its Limits — 23 parts. The architecture the official docs never wrote. Everything I had to discover through trial and error — so you don't have to.
The Real Lesson
Wanting clarity, great visuals, and depth — none of that is wrong.
But perfectionism becomes a trap the moment it stops making the work better and starts stopping the work from existing.
So — what's yours? What have you been sitting on because it's just not ready yet?
Easy peasy lemon squeezy — not because it's easy. Because you did the hard work, so the reader doesn't have to do it alone.
Sam Abaasi — Frontend Engineer
Medium · DEV Community · LinkedIn
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