You are not meant to do this alone

There is a particular kind of distortion that happens when you work alone for long enough.

It is not loneliness, exactly, though it can coexist with loneliness. It is something more specific than that. It is the way your own ideas begin to sound different to you when they have only ever bounced off the inside of your own skull. The small setbacks that start to feel catastrophic because there is nobody to say: that’s a normal week, not a sign that everything is falling apart. The brilliant idea that you’ve been so close to for so long that you can no longer tell whether it’s brilliant or just familiar. The doubt that fills the silence where another voice might have been.

I call it the echo chamber. And I think it is one of the least discussed problems in the creative and entrepreneurial life. Partly because the romantic version of the solitary creative working alone in their garret makes the isolation sound like a feature rather than a bug. It is not a feature. It is a condition that, if left unaddressed, quietly distorts the work and the person doing it.

The echo chamber is not the absence of people. It is the absence of the right people the ones who understand the specific kind of work you’re doing and can engage with it honestly.

You can have a full life a partner, a family, friends you love, a social calendar and still be working in an echo chamber. Because the people in your life, however much they love you, may not be able to do what a peer can do: sit with you in the specific terrain of the work, understand the particular problems it presents, and tell you the truth about what they see.

This essay is about why that matters and about what it looks like to build the kind of peer connection that makes the work better and the working life more sustainable.

What gets distorted in isolation.

Let me be specific about what the echo chamber does, because it doesn’t always announce itself clearly.

It distorts scale. In isolation, a setback that is ordinary and recoverable can become evidence of a fundamental problem. A good week can start to feel like a fluke. A bad week can start to feel like the truth. When there is nobody to say, ‘I had a week exactly like that in February and here’s what helped,’ you are left with only your own history and your own interpretation of it which when you’re in the middle of something difficult is rarely the most reliable narrator.

It distorts value. The ideas you’ve been living with for a long time start to lose their texture. You can no longer tell which parts are actually good and which are just familiar. You’ve heard yourself think through the thing so many times that you’ve lost the ability to hear it fresh. And without someone to say, ‘that bit and that’s the thing, don’t lose that’ or ‘I think you’re overcomplicating this section,’ you end up either over valuing what you’ve built or under valuing it, often alternating between the two in ways that are exhausting and unproductive.

It distorts the voice of the inner critic. The fraud feeling is loudest in isolation. Not because isolation makes you less capable it doesn’t but because there is nothing to counterbalance it. No external data point. No witness to what you’ve actually produced. Just the voice, and the silence, and the gap between where you are and where you think you should be, growing in the absence of anyone to tell you that the gap is a normal part of the process and not a permanent condition.

In isolation, everything is louder. The doubt. The setbacks. The distance between where you are and where you want to be. A peer doesn’t make those things disappear. They make them the right size.

What we need and what we don’t.

The answer is not networking. I want to be clear about this because the word ‘networking’ carries a specific set of associations that are almost entirely unhelpful here. The business card, the elevator pitch, the polished version of the work presented to people you’ve just met in the hope that it produces some undefined future benefit.

That is not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about something smaller, more deliberate, and more honest than that. Two or three people or sometimes even one who are doing work adjacent to yours, who are at a similar stage of building something, and who you can be genuinely truthful with about how it’s actually going.

The function of this kind of peer connection is specific. There are three things it does that you cannot do for yourself, and they are worth naming separately.

The first is the idea bounce. The conversation in which you think out loud about something you haven’t fully formed yet, and the other person asks the question that clarifies it, or makes the connection you hadn’t made, or says, ‘I think what you’re actually describing is...’ and suddenly the thing is clearer than it was when it only existed in your head. This is not the same as feedback on finished work. It is the messy, generative thing that happens when two minds engage with a problem that one of them has been too close to.

The second is the reality check. The person who can says kindly, but clearly ‘I think you’re catastrophising about this’ or ‘actually, I think that’s a real problem and here’s why’ or ‘you’ve been stuck on this for three months and I think the reason is...’ This requires a particular kind of trust that takes time to build. It cannot happen in a networking event. It can happen between people who have been in regular, honest contact for long enough to have earned it.

The third is the witness. Someone who knows what you’re building, has been watching it develop over time can see the progress that you from the inside cannot. This is different from cheerleading. The witness is not telling you it’s great. They are telling you: this is what I’ve watched you build over the last six months, and this is what I see when I look at it. That external perspective on your own trajectory is one of the most valuable things you can have and one of the hardest to generate from within.

You need the idea bounce. You need the reality check. You need the witness. These don’t have to be the same person. But you need at least one of each.

The case for getting in a room.

I will say clearly what I think about virtual versus in-person, because I think there is a tendency to pretend they are equivalent when they are not.

Virtual connection is better than no connection. A monthly video call with two people you trust is infinitely more valuable than working in complete isolation. I’m not arguing against it. I use it. It works, within its limits.

But something happens in a room together that does not happen on a screen, and I don’t think we’re serving anyone by pretending otherwise.

It is partly the side conversations the things said before the formal start and after the official end, when the camera is off or almost off and the guard is down. Some of the most useful conversations I’ve had with peers have happened in those edge spaces, the ten minutes before we started or the walk to the car afterwards.

It is partly the embodied reading of each other. The thing that someone’s face is doing when they hear an idea that interests them. The change in energy in the room when something true gets said. The difference between ‘I’m fine, just tired’ on a screen and ‘I’m fine, just tired’ across a table, where you can see what fine actually means.

It is partly the permission that physical presence gives to say the harder thing. There is something about being in the same room with someone that makes directness feel safer rather than riskier. The frank conversation that would feel too blunt in a message or too exposed on a video call can feel like the natural thing to say when you’re sitting across a table from each other.

And it is partly simply the duration. A video call has a natural end point. A day together does not. Ideas that take three hours to arrive are not accessible in a ninety-minute video call, however good the ninety minutes is.

From Jules

The most important professional conversation of the last year didn’t happen in a scheduled call. It happened on a walk the long kind, the kind where you’ve been talking for long enough that the polished version of what you’re thinking has run out and what’s left is the actual thing you needed to say. You can’t schedule that. But you can create the conditions for it. Which means getting in a room. Getting outside. Giving it enough time. And being with people who you trust enough to let the actual thing arrive.

How to actually build this.

Start smaller than you think. The instinct, when you realise you need this kind of connection, is to build a community. A mastermind. A group with twelve people and a Slack and a monthly call and a set of guidelines. That is not where to start.

Start with one person. One person who is doing work adjacent to yours, not identical, adjacent who is at a similar stage, who you respect enough to trust and trust enough to be honest with. Reach out to them. Not with a pitch or a proposal. Just: I’ve been thinking about how isolated the work can feel, and I think we could both benefit from some regular contact. Would you want to try meeting monthly for a few months and see how it goes?

From that conversation, if it works, you might eventually add a second or third person. You might not. Two people in genuine regular honest contact produce more useful connection than six people in a group that’s too large for anyone to be truly honest in.

The rhythm matters more than the format.

Monthly is better than quarterly. A standing commitment the first Tuesday of every month, a call, the same people builds the kind of familiarity and trust that makes honesty possible. The episodic version, the catch-up when you think of it or when things feel particularly hard, never quite gets there. The trust is built in the ordinary months, the ones when nothing particular is happening, the ones when you show up and say, ‘things are fine, this is what I’m working on’ and the other person knows your work well enough by now to ask the right question.

When you meet virtually or in person the structure doesn’t need to be complicated. What are you working on. What’s stuck. What do you need. One person at a time. Time-limited so everyone gets space. And then the question that is worth asking of everyone, at every gathering: what’s the thing you haven’t said yet? That is almost always where the useful conversation lives.

The useful stuff is almost never the thing you came in planning to say. It’s the thing that arrives after you’ve been talking for long enough that the prepared version runs out.

The in person gathering.

Once or twice a year, if you can manage it more if you’re geographically close enough do this in person. A day, not an hour. Somewhere that isn’t a coffee shop, somewhere you can be unhurried. Walk, if you can ideas arrive differently when you’re moving, and the shift in physical context shifts something in the conversation too.

The in person gathering serves a different function from the regular virtual rhythm. The regular virtual rhythm sustains the connection. The in person gathering deepens it. It’s the one where the relationship changes. Where the thing that couldn’t quite be said on a video call gets said. Where you leave knowing the other person and being known by them in a way you didn’t before.

It doesn’t need to be elaborate. A morning walk and a long lunch. A day in someone’s kitchen. The kind of gathering that has enough time and enough ease for the unhurried conversation to arrive.

What if the community doesn’t exist yet?

Here is the thing nobody tells you when you start looking for this kind of peer connection: the group you need may not exist yet. The people who would be in it may not know each other. They may not even know they’re looking for the same thing.

That is not a reason to wait. That is the invitation to build it.

Building a peer group from scratch feels presumptuous. Who are you to convene people? Who decides you’re the one to send the email, book the space, suggest the first meeting? The answer, in the absence of anyone else doing it, is you are. Because somebody must, and the somebody is usually the person who noticed the gap.

The first meeting will be awkward. I want to say this clearly because the awkwardness is the thing that stops most people from trying again. You will sit down together and there will be a moment possibly several moments where nobody is quite sure what the point of this is or what the structure is supposed to be or whether this was a good idea. That moment is not a sign that it was a bad idea. That moment is the beginning of something that hasn’t found its shape yet.

The first meeting will be awkward. Keep meeting. The awkwardness is not the signal to stop. It is the normal friction of people who haven’t yet learned to be honest with each other finding their way toward it.

Push past the awkward. Have the second meeting. And the third. The thing that makes a peer group valuable the honesty, the shorthand, the ability to say the difficult thing and have it land well is built over time and through repetition. It cannot be forced into a single meeting, however well-structured. It arrives gradually, through the accumulation of ordinary contact.

How to start one online or in person.

If you’re starting online, the barrier is lower and that’s both its strength and its weakness. Lower barrier to start you can send a few messages, set up a video call, and have something running within a week. Lower commitment: people are used to dropping in and out of online things, and without some deliberate structure the group can dissolve as easily as it formed.

The thing that keeps an online group alive is a rhythm that becomes a commitment rather than an option. The standing call. The date that’s in everyone’s diary and stays there. Not the monthly check-in that gets rescheduled whenever someone is busy — because someone will always be busy but the standing commitment that happens anyway, even when it’s a quieter month, even when nobody has a particular crisis to discuss. The ordinary months are where the trust is built.

If you’re starting in person, the barrier is higher and the return is different. Higher barrier: coordinating schedules, finding a space, the commitment of actual travel. Different return: everything described in the previous section about what happens in a room that doesn’t happen on a screen. You will have to decide whether the higher barrier is worth it for your particular situation and geography. In most cases, I think it is.

Some practical ways to start:

Send three messages. Think of three people not twelve, three, who are doing work adjacent to yours, who you respect, who you think might be open to this kind of connection. Send them a message that is honest about what you’re looking for: something like ‘I’ve been thinking about how isolated the work can feel, and I’m wondering whether a small group of us meeting regularly might be useful. Would you be interested in trying it for a few months?’

Don’t overthink the format for the first meeting. A question each, some time to talk, a decision about whether to meet again. That’s enough. You can build structure later, once you know who’s in the room and what everyone needs.

If you’re building in person: book a space that isn’t a coffee shop. A kitchen table is fine. A walk is better than most meeting rooms. The informality is part of what makes the honesty possible.

Give it three meetings before you evaluate it. The first will be awkward. The second will be less awkward. The third is when you start to understand what this particular group of people can do together.

The online community, when geography is the obstacle.

If you are in a place, or at a stage of life, where in person gathering is genuinely difficult and there are many such places and stages. Then the online version is not a consolation prize. It is a real thing, with its own value and its own texture.

What makes an online peer group work is the same thing that makes any ongoing relationship work: regular contact, real honesty, and the willingness to show up in the ordinary months as well as the interesting ones. The online format can absolutely sustain that. What it requires, more than the in person version, is deliberate structure because the absence of physical presence means the group needs more scaffolding to stay real.

Some things that help keeping the group small (three to five people is the right size for genuine honesty larger than that and it becomes a performance), having a format that everyone understands so the meeting doesn’t dissolve into small talk, and agreeing in advance that the commitment is for a defined period three or six months with a deliberate review point. That last one matters more than it might seem: a commitment with a review point feels more manageable than an open ended commitment, and at the review you can decide together whether to continue, change the format, or end it.

And once a year, if at all possible: meet in person. Even once. The relationship that exists on screen and then exists in a room is a different and deeper relationship. If geography and budget allow it, build in one in person gathering a year. Make it unhurried. Give it a day, not an hour.

The online rhythm sustains the connection. The in person gathering deepens it. You need both if you can manage both.

The courage it takes.

I want to name why we don’t do this more, because it’s not only that we’re busy or that we haven’t thought of it.

It requires showing people the unfinished work. The half formed idea. The thing you’re genuinely stuck on. The fear you haven’t been able to say out loud. The echo chamber is at least private. The alternative requires saying: here is something I’m not sure about, in front of a real person, and I would like you to engage with it honestly.

That is more vulnerable than it sounds. Particularly for people who are used to presenting the polished version who have learned, in professional contexts, to manage how they are perceived, to wait until the idea is developed before sharing it, to protect the work until it’s ready.

The problem is that the work gets better in the conversation, not after it. The idea that arrives half formed and gets thought through in dialogue with someone who understands it is often better than the idea that was developed alone and only shared when finished. The willingness to show the unfinished thing is not a professional risk. It is the mechanism by which the thing gets finished.

The work gets better in the conversation, not after it. The willingness to show the unfinished thing is not a professional risk. It is the mechanism by which the thing gets finished.

You are not meant to do this alone.

The romantic version of the solitary creative the one that produces art in isolation, sustained by vision alone, needing nothing from the world except the occasional reader is a myth. A pervasive and damaging one.

Every creative person I know who is doing work they’re proud of has people. Not a lot of people. Not a community with a name and a mission statement. Just a handful of people who know the work, who can be honest about it, who show up in the ordinary months as well as the crisis ones. Who say: I noticed that. Who say: I think you’re wrong about that. Who say: do you remember what you said six months ago about this? You’ve done it.

That is what I’m talking about. Not networking. Not community in the abstract. A small number of real relationships with people who understand the terrain you’re in, built through regular contact and honesty and time.

It starts with one person. One reach out. One conversation that doesn’t have a pitch in it.

Name someone, just one person, one who is doing work adjacent to yours, who you respect and trust, who you’ve been meaning to get back in contact with. Send them a message today. Not to build anything. Just to start the conversation.

The echo chamber ends when someone else’s voice enters it. That can happen as early as today.

Go be gloriously you,

Jules