Austin Kleon

Doubling up on the notion of the blog as a place to learn was a recent article from Austin Kleon (another person who blogs regularly), this article from him has continued to resonate with me.

I also like the quote he shares from Ali Abdaal:

It's the difference between saying 'I'm an expert and I'm going to teach you something', and saying 'I'm a fellow student and I'm going to share what I've learnt and maybe you can take something from this.'

Often, when I teach, I learn as well. I have to know the information and understand it enough to feed it back to the students. I know there is some science behind this—I'm sure I read it at one time—that teaching helps build those neural paths.

Kleon also brings up Rob Walker's piece "How Nick Quah Became the Podcast Whisperer":

Quah's actual qualifications for taking on the role of public thinker on podcasting were nil. He'd never made a podcast, had no background in radio or audio media of any kind.

Both Seth Godin and Jordan Harbinger considered the question of teaching versus qualifications.