Sometimes... the right time to release is before it's finished, because it may never be finished, and there may never be a right time to release it.
Take, for example, this page that I quietly posted online in December 2018, intending to one day finish, but that never happened.
It became the top post on Hacker News one day in February 2021. It was a page I didn't finish and never will.
And now, in February 2026, I'm finally writing about it 5 years later, when I wanted to write about it years ago, in all manner of detail on why I wrote it and why I decided to put it online even though it was unfinished.
I wanted to write about how surprised I was to see it on Hacker News, posted by someone I didn't know, who not only found my page, but found enough value to share it in its unfinished state.
I wanted to write about how I was inspired by Richard Feynman, and how he visualized equations in color to see complex concepts more clearly.
But I had thought too much about what I wanted to write in such a post, so I never felt it was finished, and as such never released it.
And now I remember to take my own advice from many years ago, to release before it's finished, because I may never finish it, and there will never be a right time to release it.