Hey there, Creator! I am Kenzi Wood. Thanks for tuning in, and welcome if you're new to this corner of the internet. I never take your time and attention for granted, and I'm grateful you're here.
TL;DR
The spotlight effect makes you wildly overestimate how much other people notice your mistakes or imperfections.😬
This bias hits creators especially hard because you are technically “in public.”
The result is self-censorship and content that feels safer, but flatter.
The quick answer: Assume your audience is paying 80% less attention to your flaws than you think—and post like that’s true.
If you’ve ever hovered over the “post” button thinking,
“This sounds stupid.”
“People will notice that typo.”
“What if they think I’m cringe or annoying?”
Congrats. You’ve just met the spotlight effect. It’s one of the most creativity-killing cognitive biases in the creator economy.
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What is the spotlight effect?
The spotlight effect is a psychological bias where people overestimate how much others notice their appearance, behavior, or mistakes. 🔦
In other words, you feel like you’re under a giant stage light, but everyone else isn’t paying much attention to you. They’re actually checking their own reflection.
Psychologists Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Medvec, and Kenneth Savitsky coined the term in 1999. In their study, participants were asked to wear an embarrassing T-shirt (think: painfully uncool band tee) in a room full of people.👕
They were then asked, “How many people do you think noticed your shirt?” Participants guessed nearly half the room. In reality, it was less than 25%.
Why the spotlight effect is uniquely brutal for creators
For most people, the spotlight effect is irrational because they’re not actually in the spotlight. But creators are. You are being watched, liked, shared, and commented on. So your brain takes a real truth (“I’m visible”) and turns it into a distorted one (“Everyone is scrutinizing me”).😟
That distortion shows up in subtle but damaging ways:
You over-edit until you’ve sucked all the personality out of a post
You avoid sharing half-formed ideas
You sanitize stories that could’ve built real connection
You mistake self-consciousness for professionalism
The longer you’re in the spotlight, the more likely you are to start covering up flaws, too.
How to work with the spotlight effect instead of fighting it
1. Delay exposure, not expression
If something feels too raw to share right now, don’t force it. Time reduces emotional intensity, which reduces the spotlight effect.
You don’t need to share a tough experience right now while things are hard. Waiting a few weeks or months can ground you and make your story more powerful.
2. Intentionally enter “uncomfy but safe” situations
Confidence follows evidence. Low-stakes discomfort is the best exposure therapy for creators. That might mean:
Posting a slightly imperfect draft
Sharing a lesson or skill before you’ve “mastered” it
Leaving typos (as long as they don’t change the meaning of your post, of course)
3. Shift attention outward before you publish
The spotlight effect is strongest when your focus goes inward. Before posting, deliberately redirect that focus outward:
Read comments on other creators’ posts 🤳
Skim current news or trends
Ask: “What does my audience need today?”
This breaks the self-monitoring loop and also keeps you grounded in your audience’s needs, not your imperfections.
4. Name the embarrassment
Sometimes the fastest way out is through. Saying something simple like, “This might be messy, but here’s what I’m thinking…” disarms both your brain and your audience.😯
When you contextualize imperfection, it doesn’t read as incompetence; it reads as honesty.
5. Understand the embarrassment multiplier
The spotlight effect scales with how embarrassed you feel, not how embarrassing something objectively is.
More shame = more paralysis.
The less moral weight you assign to mistakes, the less power the spotlight effect has over your output.
What’s the nuance?
The spotlight effect isn’t the same as “no one cares”
People do notice you. They just don’t notice what you think they notice. Your audience may remember an idea you shared, but they’re far less likely to remember typos or awkward phrasing.
The danger is using the spotlight effect to dismiss feedback entirely. Patterned, repeated feedback is real data you can act on. Random self-conscious panic is not. 🙅♀️
It doesn’t protect you from relevance drift
Audiences don’t obsess over your mistakes, but they do disengage if your content doesn’t offer value. The spotlight effect frees you from perfectionism, not from your responsibility to create relevant content.
Vulnerability works, until it becomes trauma dumping
The spotlight effect encourages creators to share more openly, which is generally a good thing.
But there’s a line between:
Vulnerability (sharing meaning, insight, or perspective), and
Emotional offloading (sharing before you’ve made sense of it yourself)
That’s why delayed exposure matters. You don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) share everything in real time.
Your move
The spotlight isn’t your enemy. It’s your brain’s tendency to catastrophize when you’re in the spotlight.🧠
This week, post one thing you almost didn’t — not because it’s reckless, but because it’s honest. Who knows? Chances are, the inner voice you’ve been muting might start sounding like you again.
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Speak soon,
Kenzi
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