I joined Polywork a few weeks ago, it's been an amazing experience and I thought it'll be great to pen down my thoughts as an early adopter of the platform. In case you are not familiar with Polywork, that's not a problem I can give a tl;dr explanation of what the platform is but I'll recommend you check it out yourself the landing page does a great job of explaining the platform in the most creative way.

Polywork is a platform for Multiplayers - creatives, developers, designers, anyone who is looking to build a platform with their personal and professional work and achievements that allow you to represent who you are and the value you create.

You know how you have always wanted a tool to exist for the things you needed so bad that you carve into the side-projects hell and decide to make that tool yourself or just find another solution? I was exactly at this point earlier in the year, I wanted a unified way of sharing all the things I was doing in one place - (from my writing, videos, speaking, etc) I do these outside my 9-5 job and it's been a big part of my career so I wanted to have one place where I can track all of these activities for myself and for others to find as well.

One place for all my work!

So I got thinking, I already had a Blog, Channel, Twitter profile and so many more but where do I collate all of the things that I was doing, that's exactly the problem I had. I found a tool - Linktree that I decided to give a try but it wasn't exactly what I needed. This only helped direct people to all the other platforms where my content lived but not exactly showing them the content in one place.

I went with it regardless at the time I thought it might be nice to build something for myself similar to Linktree and have that live on my domain but I never got to it. Thanks to Stephanie Morillo for the idea though.

Down the line, I came up with a different idea to start a weekly newsletter with all the content and work I created for the week and share that. That was not a bad idea I thought so I went with that. This worked but for a few weeks, I would almost miss sending the update for the week, and the week after that when I don't create any content I feel there's no need to send an issue, and the big picture I wanted all content in one place to access at any time was not exactly working with this solution.

Imagine I want to check what I did for the month I have to go back and read four issues of my newsletter which is not a terrible idea, but you know if there's a better solution definitely will pick that over this. So I decided to move the newsletter to a monthly recurring update where I share all the things I did for the month.

The Future of Professional Networking!

Well, I finally found the tool I needed - Polywork, and I'll tell you why in a bit but thanks to my Twitter timeline I've been seeing this pop up for a few days unsure what it is I just skimmed through the tweets until I decided to do a google search! I was hooked from reading up what the platform is about so I immediately signed up and joined the waitlist.

Remember how I wanted to have all the work I've done in one place? Polywork solves exactly that for me and even offers more and that's why I'm very excited about it. The platform gives you space where you can share your work, be yourself and you can blend both your professional and personal interests without feeling like it's not the right place for you to share them. Other platforms I've tried - "LinkedIn" for example I mostly feel awkward sharing my vlog content when I make them because I see it as a "professional", "strictly-work" platform even though I've seen other people share this kind of content there I still feel very weird about it.

Polywork is a social and professional network for people like me that want to express themselves, share the work we're doing, and generally connect with other like-minded individuals. Before I go on with what I like about the platform and some of its features, I just thought it'll be nice to self plug my profile 😉 check out my Polywork Profile still updating previous years' work need all of it documented. So, the first thing that struck my attention has the be the superb illustrations and the minimal design used on the platform it gives off a very modern vibe and general good UX for users of the platform. The other thing I also like is how they allow me to track all my achievements in a timeline where I can share all the work I've done from the start of my career that's just great and what I wanted in the first place, problem solved!

In addition, you can create activity tags for your post this is where I enjoy just randomly checking what activities tag already exist and I also just discovered I can create my own ain't that cool!

A part of this that just makes absolute sense to me is the fact that you don't get likes and comments on your posts like other social media platforms I once read a book that justified why having these metrics could be damaging.

Do you know what else is possible? You can set up a custom domain for your profile and a couple of days ago I published a guide on how to set up a custom domain with Netlify and Namecheap check it out!

Connections and Collaboration

Unlocked Polywork isn't just a platform where you can share your work, it's also a connected network of professionals. I like to think of it as where the future of work is going where there's less barrier in finding and connecting to other professionals based on their work and interests. Multiverse is one place where you can find all of these. You can explore trending badges, featured people, collaboration possibilities and so much more this is what I've been missing from other platforms and to think this is just the start of all of this.

I'm excited to see where the platform goes in terms of adoption from the community and overall growth, it's still in early beta and looking this good already, I'm looking forward to trying all the cool updates the team is building to make this a unified platform for multiplayer.