I’m about half-way through Ali Abdaal’s Feel Good Productivity and one thing that’s stuck out to me is the protege effect. In the book, he tells a story of 8th graders split into 2 groups for a learning experiment. One group is told they’ll have a test which will be graded. The other group is told they have to teach a computer-generated avatar and how well that avatar does on a test will determine their mark.
Then both groups are given the same test to evaluate their knowledge. The group that does the teaching has the best grasp of the information.
If you go back on my blog you’ll find lots of posts about how to do coding stuff in WordPress. I attribute that to finding my current job because someone found my WordPress writing and then years later recommended me for a job. I also attribute all that early writing to how well I understand WordPress to this day.
I still remember sitting down to write about a problem I had just solved a few hours before and while trying to explain working code I’d realize that I didn’t understand the code as well as I thought. Then I’d need to do more research so that I could explain the code well to someone who understood less than I did.
I even remember starting to write, and then realizing that someone needed some other foundational concept so I needed to step back further and explain something else first.
I need to start doing this again because I learn new technology things all the time and if I want to cement my learning I need to start teaching the same concepts.
You need to start teaching if you want to cement your knowledge. That means getting a blog, and no it won’t make you millions due to it’s popularity, but it may open up new opportunities in your career as someone finds your site and likes the content. It will certainly expand your life as you work to explain whatever it is you’re learning and realize you need more clarity so you dig deeper.
So, reply or comment, where are you going to teach what you’re learning?
