If you care about your professional reputation — and you don’t want others publishing your ideas before you — you need to make time to publish your own thinking.
Every knowledge worker is a creator. If you use your brain for a living, you generate ideas, frameworks, and advice every single week. Sometimes every day. Often, multiple times per day.
- A teammate asks a question in Slack.
- A client asks for your advice.
- You help someone see something they couldn’t before.
That moment — when your words make something click for someone else — is where value is created. It’s your brain producing signal.
But here’s the problem: most of it disappears.
You close the chat. Move on to the next call. The insight dissolves into entropy.
The Cost of Unpublished Thought
I’ve watched this happen countless times. Smart people give advice that’s sharper and more relevant than anything you can find online — then let it vanish. Weeks later, someone else publishes the same idea as a polished LinkedIn post, and suddenly they’re the thought leader.
You might even see it and think, I said that years ago.
That’s the difference between thinkers and shippers.
Between entropy and syntropy.
The insight that wasn’t captured is lost. The insight that’s shipped becomes part of your professional legacy.
The 72-Hour Rule of Signal Decay
Every good idea has a half-life. Wait too long to share it, and it fades — in clarity, in relevance, and in ownership.
At Kalungi, we call this the 72-Hour Rule:
If you don’t ship your insight within three days, its syntropy decays back into entropy.
Your memory blurs. The spark that made it interesting dims. The value you created for one person could have helped hundreds. But now it’s gone.
How to Know When to Publish
It’s simple. The next time you give advice, answer a question, or explain something to someone, ask yourself one question:
If I searched for this answer online, would I find something better than what I just said?
If the answer is no — if your insight is clearer, more contextual, or more useful — then you’ve already created signal.
You just haven’t turned it into something lasting yet.
Syntropy in Practice: Turning Moments into Assets
When you publish, you don’t just document what you know. You refine it.
- Writing forces clarity.
- Publishing forces quality.
- And sharing publicly forces courage.
It pushes you to make your advice sharper than it was when you said it in passing. It transforms a helpful comment into a permanent contribution.
You don’t even need a blog. Post it as a LinkedIn article, a short post, or a note on your personal site. Use AI as your assistant — not your author. Tell it what you said, give it the context, and let it draft. You’ll be surprised how fast you can turn a chat into a publishable piece.
The Motivation Behind It
This isn’t about vanity metrics. It’s about meaning.
Humans thrive when three things align:
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We learn something new.
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We leave something behind.
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We create something that wouldn’t exist without us.
Publishing connects all three. It makes your work feel consequential because it is consequential. It leaves a trail of clarity others can follow — proof that your thinking mattered.
The Publishing Habit
Here’s a simple framework to start:
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End each week with reflection.
Scroll back through your DMs, Slack messages, or emails. Find one answer, explanation, or insight that could help others.
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Apply the Google Test.
Search the same question. If what you said is clearer, more human, or more specific — publish it.
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Capture before it decays.
Record a short voice note or use an LLM to turn your reply into an outline.
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Refine with AI.
Treat it as your scribe. Keep your judgment as the editor.
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Ship within 72 hours.
Don’t over-polish. Your first draft is almost always your truest version.
Do this weekly. Over time, you’ll create a body of work that compounds — a visible record of your signal.
The Syntropy Advantage
When you make publishing a habit, several things start to happen:
• You build credibility — a living proof of your clarity and craft.
• You build momentum — the act of shipping becomes its own reward.
• You build legacy — ideas that would have died in private now outlive you.
AI will make it easier for anyone to produce words, but it can’t make them matter. That’s still your job. The human act of meaning-making — of deciding what deserves to exist — is the essence of syntropy.
Closing Reflection
You’re already creating signal.
You just need to ship it before it decays.
If you care about your reputation, your influence, and your legacy, publish your ideas before someone else does.
Your thoughts are your professional equity. Protect them by making them public.
Don’t let your best ideas die in a Slack thread.
Don’t let entropy win.
Publish or be forgotten.
Your 72 hours begin now.
