Privacy creates room for mistakes that do not become performances.

Doing something in private means you can be bad at it. The false starts, the bad draft, the awkward first attempt all pass without an audience, and you can adjust or abandon without it becoming a story about you. Once something is public, changing course requires explaining, which makes people persist with things they should have dropped. Privacy is what makes cheap mistakes possible.

Start new things quietly. Give yourself a stretch of failing without commentary before anybody knows. You can announce it once it is working, or never.