scratch your own itch

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Scratch your own itch is a key indieweb principle that helps everyone focus on working on things that make a difference to their own lives.

Make tools for yourself first, not for all of your friends or ”everyone“. If you design tools for some hypothetical user, they may not actually exist; if you make tools for yourself, you actually do exist. It's extremely hard to fight Metcalfe's law: you won't be able to convince all your friends to join the independent web. By making something that satisfies your needs, and is backwards compatible for others, e.g. by practicing POSSE, you benefit immediately, without having to convince anyone else. If and when others join, you all benefit. This principle is also known as scratch your own itch.

Brainstorming

There may be more broadly appealing ways of saying "Scratch your own itch". It's worth brainstorming about such potential replacements.

Make What You Need

More direct than a metaphor, make what you need, expresses a method of focusing that parallels well with another principle, use what you make. As a metaphor, we could use "cook what you want" or "cook what you hunger" (see the next section for the cooking metaphor in particular).

• +0 Tantek Çelik proposed, but now prefer "cook what you want" (see below) because it parallels "eat what you cook", and cooking/eating is more tangible, a more relatable metaphor that the more abstract call to "make" something.
• +1 Chris Aldrich
• +1 Anthony Ciccarello to "make what you want"
• +1 Kasper Zutterman
• +1 Ana Rodrigues I prefer this one to any food analogies because "food" is a "content note" itself. I wonder if it could accidentally upset anyone with any relationship with food that they find difficult.
• +1 Calum Ryan I agree Chris' - "make what you want" seems more appropriate, not to be confused with a focus in efforts on what is or isn't essential in the context of a website.

Or variant "make what you want". Not sure about need vs want as a focusing framing. Which is more similar to "itch"? Which is more broadly appealing?

• Perhaps the difference between the two is something which could be prioritized? Make first what you need, then make what you want, which allows one to focus on creativity and exploration. This is similar to the human need for attaining basics like food, clothing, and shelter and then creating something beyond that. Making what you want is definitely more aspirational and perhaps inspirational, though it can have the tendency to turn off those who don't have the basics yet. — Chris Aldrich
• There’s a spectrum between need and want, that perhaps goes even farther:
  • need - want - satisfied - full - annoyed - uncomfortable - overwhelmed
• I also think we need to be careful about drawing comparisons with "basic" needs, except to perhaps draw a contrast with creative activities. — Tantek Çelik

Cook What You Want

cook what you want is the counterpart (preceding) to eat what you cook, and a metaphor for focusing your IndieWeb efforts on your own wants & needs first.

• +1 Tantek Çelik — I prefer this as it feels more approachable and specific (tangible/relatable) than "make what you need/want"
• +1 Jacky Alciné
• +1 Marty McGuire
• +1 Anthony Ciccarello
• +1 Chris Aldrich this seems like one of the broadest and more welcoming framings and dovetails with the other side of the coin eat what you cook
• Add yourself here… (see this for more details)

Other similar metaphors:

• Write what you want to read
  • Write the book you want to read
  • "You can’t guess what your audience wants. Write to please. Please yourself."
  • "Write the story you want to say." (ibid)
• "Paint the painting you want to see." (ibid)
• "Sing the song you want to hear." (ibid)
• start the podcast that you want to listen to

More generically:

• Create the thing you want to consume
  • +0 Tantek Çelik: I like the abstraction from a broader understanding perspective, though then it loses the ease of relating (and positive emotional association) that a metaphor provides which I feel is more important especially for new folks

Thoughts on which metaphor:

• Tantek Çelik: Of all those metaphor variants, I think "Cook what you want" is perhaps the most universal / approachable / relatable, as everyone wants to eat, and everyone has at least financial (nevermind health etc.) incentives to try to cook/prepare at least some of their food. It hits more fundamentally in Maslow's hierarchy (i.e. compared to writing, painting, podcasting, toolmaking). Though obviously even regarding food, there are real problems in terms of food deserts etc.
• ...

Be The Change

"scratch your own itch" is as much as admonition to actually do the "scratching" yourself, as well as prioritizing "your own itch". In this regard it is expressing the "Be the change" expression common in forms like:

• "Be the change you want to see in the world" (misattributed to Gandhi)
• "Change yourself and you have done your part in the changing the the world. Every individual must change [their] own life if they want to live in a peaceful world", from "Para-gram" by Paramahansa Yogananda
• "If you want to make the world a better place, Take a look at yourself, and then make a change" - Michael Jackson, "Man In The Mirror" (all profits from that single went to charity apparently, per http://enwp.org/Michael_Jackson)

Create for Yourself

Make or create for yourself seems better than make what you want. It focuses the creation act as something you do for you, not for anyone else.

• +1 David Shanske proposed
• +0 Anthony Ciccarello This sounds similar to what creators say (writers/artists/youtubers)
• +1 Ana Rodrigues I also like this one. I interpreted it as a permission to make what you need and not to try to impress others.
• Add yourself here… (see this for more details)

See Also

• itches
• principles
• selfdogfood

• I try to be deliberate, and social networks seem more and more to say: You don’t know what you want, but we do. Which, to someone who, you know, gives a shit, is pretty dang insulting.

  — Craig Mod
• "Drinking Our Own Champagne" https://www.mindmeister.com/blog/drinking-our-own-champagne/
• https://twitter.com/rococopacetic/status/1387526141938966528
  • "Bill Scott, a Philadelphia artist, came to speak to my class in college. He said something along the lines of "if you paint to please yourself, many others will also be pleased, but if you paint to please many, no one will." Works for lots of things." @rococopacetic April 28, 2021
• eat what you cook
• You're Allowed To Make Your Own Tools - Making personal side projects for fun and profit https://www.swyx.io/make-your-own-tools/
• “Write the story you want to say. Paint the painting you want to see. Sing the song you want to hear. Create you” https://www.ipaintiwrite.com/2013/05/17/you-cant-guess-what-your-audience-wants-write-to-please-please-yourself/
• Why we should move away from scratch itch phrases as a principle or re-expression thereof.: CW! 2008-06-23 The New Yorker: The Itch CW: addiction, drugs, icky/gross body things 🤢