I Know You Knew It All Along

Yesterday, I wrote about how important it is to understand your audience, and how they may not know what you know… or at least as well as you know it.

Then it is your responsibility to teach what you know. Share your knowledge. Make others smarter.

No matter how simple it seems to you, there is often going to be somebody in your audience who doesn’t know it yet. They might even have trouble understanding you.

Be kind.

I’d like to share this quote from Paul Graham (http://paulgraham.com/useful.html):

“Telling people something they didn’t know doesn’t always mean surprising them. Sometimes it means telling them something they knew unconsciously but had never put into words. In fact those may be the more valuable insights, because they tend to be more fundamental.”

This is one of the benefits of knowing something well, of being so comfortable with a subject that you can make it seem simple. Obvious.

The risk here is that your listener, your student, might not be sure they even learned anything from you.

Like, they knew it all along.

Because you made it so clear. So easy. So fundamental. So valuable.

Because you are a good teacher.

What do you think?

See you tomorrow!