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Those Who Can Do, Must Teach: Why Teaching Makes You Better

"Those who can't do, teach" is wrong. Here's proof: I taught at the Data Science Club while learning myself. If I help bring a room of 60 people even 1 week ahead, in an hour, that's 60 weeks of learning value creation. That's more than a year of value from one hour. Teaching isn't what you do when you can't perform. It's how you multiply your impact.

Its a duty.

The Leverage of Teaching

The numbers changed how I see teaching:

Being two weeks ahead of someone + one hour helping them, maybe its 1 week of learning acceleration. Do this for 30 people? You've made 30 weeks of learning in one hour.

I've seen this work:

I started the Data Science Club barely knowing more than others. But teaching forced me to learn faster. Questions showed me gaps in my knowledge. Debugging others' code taught me edge cases. Each time I helped someone, I learned twice.

Now I do it for my consulting work, my ragtag group of friends, and my consulting clients and even those who want to learn consulting.

Why Experts Don't Teach (But Should)

Most experts don't write or teach. They focus on beginners because that's where the money is. This creates gaps no one fills.

I learned this the hard way. RSI took away my ability to type or hold a cup. As an engineer, I thought coding was my only value. I was wrong.

Not being able to code showed me something: the skills that make you successful today won't keep you valuable tomorrow. Sometimes limits push you to find better ways to help others.

Three Reasons to Teach

  1. Speed: Every teaching hour multiplies your impact. One workshop can change hundreds of careers.

  2. Legacy: Knowledge dies if you don't share it. I'm an immigrant's son. I watched knowledge skip generations because no one wrote it down.

  3. Progress: When experts keep secrets, everyone starts from zero. We waste time solving solved problems.

What Teaching Gives Back

Teaching isn't charity. It pays you back:

  1. Better Skills: Teaching forces you to plug holes in your knowledge. When I started teaching machine learning, students' questions showed me what I'd missed.

  2. More Friends: Teaching builds networks. Our club grew to 7,000 members. Ten years later, they're still my friends and work partners, when I decided I wanted to start up my twitter, they were the first to support me.

  3. New Chances: Teaching opens doors. My talks and writing brought me consulting work, people asking to pay me to teach them. Now, 50% of my revenue is from teaching.

Your Job

If you're good at something, teach it. Not because you can't do it. Because teaching makes your work count more. One teaching hour can create years of value.

I write this using speech-to-text. My hands still hurt. But I'm sure of one thing: the cost of not teaching is too high.

Teaching isn't about being perfect. It's about being one step ahead and helping others catch up. Learn from their questions. Grow together.

Work that helps no one wastes your skill. We're not alone. Your success depends on how you help others grow.

Start teaching today. Share what you know.

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