Today I invite you to reflect on the relationship between your writing skills and your effectiveness as a teacher or knowledge-sharer.
Prompt
Reflecting on the past year, how has your ability to articulate ideas in writing influenced your effectiveness in teaching or sharing knowledge with others? Were there moments when struggling to write something clearly hindered your ability to explain or teach it well? In the coming year, what steps can you take to improve your writing skills, and how might this enhance your ability to communicate and teach complex ideas more effectively?
Why This Matters
The articulation of ideas is seldom neutral; it either clarifies or obscures. Knowledge grows through conjecture and criticism. But this process depends critically on our ability to communicate our ideas with precision.
When we struggle to write clearly, we often discover we're struggling to think clearly. This isn't accidental. The discipline of writing forces us to confront the gaps in our understanding.
Teaching represents a particularly demanding form of knowledge transmission. When explaining complex systems, we must build a latticework of mental models in others' minds. This requires not just expertise in a domain but expertise in communication.
Consider how you might have fallen victim to the expert's trap this past year; did increased domain knowledge actually decrease your ability to explain fundamentals to beginners? Specialized expertise doesn't necessarily generalize to teaching effectiveness.
The coming year offers a chance to invert this problem: define what failed communication looks like, then work backward to avoid it. Each time you write, you're creating objective knowledge that exists independent of your subjective understanding. Make it robust.
Remember that all communication exists within networks, and the structure of these connections shapes how ideas spread. The clarity of your writing may determine whether your ideas become resilient memes or die waiting for hosts.
Take time with this reflection. Patience trumps hyperactivity.