The Tyranny of the Send Button

And how to use its power for good.

Has this ever happened to you?

You're about to hit send on a message. It's an important one, so you read it over one last time... And suddenly, that hilarious Parks and Rec reference is actually kind of awkward. And the very clever way you worded that last sentence could easily be misinterpreted. In fact, the whole thing could be read as passive-aggressive. And there's a typo.

"I read it a thousand times. How did I not see this before?"

This is the mysterious power of the Send Button. It grips me every time. And I've grown to love it.

Texts and emails are just the tip of the iceberg. Work presentations, wedding speeches, newsletters, entire manuscripts, anything you pour your creative energy into is subject to this strange phenomenon. And the more you care about the thing you're sending, the more vulnerable it is.

The effect, to my mind, comes from a trifecta of anxieties:

1. The Last Stand

If you never put yourself out there, no one can reject you. You knew that when you started, and you bravely banished your anxiety. But like a horror movie monster, it's never really gone—just waiting for you to let your guard down. Now it's back to make one final case for the upside of cowardice.

2. The End of Creation

Up to this point, your brilliant work of art has not yet been released into the wild. It's still shimmering with the dew of possibility. But the clay is about to enter the kiln where all that potential and all that intention will get burned away. This whole time you've actually been seeing two things: what you're making and what you imagine it could be. So much of the creative process is about bringing those two images together—like trying to focus in 3D glasses. When you're about to send, the glasses come off and you're confronted for the first time with whatever's actually there, naked and concrete. This is a gut-wrenching but vital threshold. You can't send the vision you had. You can't send the hard work you put in. You can only send the thing you made.

3. Another Pair of Eyes

Whether you're sending to one close friend or trumpeting across the internet, your brain will inevitably start to predict how the audience will respond (and your anxiety can get pretty creative about it). If you're familiar with the audience, this can be an invaluable insight. But it doesn't actually matter if your projection is accurate. The fact that you can see your work in a new light is always an opportunity.

If you can endure the anxiety triple threat, this amounts to something of a superpower, a momentary leap into a higher awareness, a clearer point of view. Like a magnifying mirror, it'll force you to face every blemish, every pore. But hotels don't install those mirrors just to make guests feel bad; They do it so you can get ready to go out!

For me, the most effective weapon against anxiety is time. I try to get anything important done early. Then when I think it might be close to ready, I start going through the motions to send—even if I don't need to for a while—just to get a dose of Send Button Fever. The two most-viewed posts on this site, "A Disability Time Paradox" and "What Star Wars Taught Me About AI Alignment", were dramatically reshaped under the harsh gaze of the Send Button.

When the anxiety catches me, which it so often does regardless of my process, I'll either step away or ask a friend for feedback.

The Most Important Part

You have to eventually hit Send. Everything you learned about your work and about yourself from this little episode is nothing compared to what you'll discover when you put yourself out there.