You are Always Learning and Teaching (How to Get Better at Both)
There are 86,400 seconds in a day.
3,600 seconds in an hour.
60 seconds in a minute.
And during every single second of every single day, you are either:
Learning
Teaching
(You’re learning during sleep, too; I’ll explain this later).
I realised this at a networking event, connecting with emerging entrepreneurs. When I made this realisation, I gasped mid-conversation, confused the person I was speaking to, added this realisation to my thought bank, and acted as if nothing had happened.
To explain why you’re always learning and teaching every second of your life, take my very simplistic definition of these two terms;
Learning = Information coming in.
Teaching = Information coming out.
You are always learning
Most people often assume learning only happens when sitting down, taking notes and studying.
That is far from true.
You are always learning, even when you aren’t sitting at your desk with your materials in front of you.
Any conversation you have, video you watch or book you read, you are consuming information in. You are still learning even if you catch yourself doom-scrolling and procrastinating on reels or short-form media. For example, when you ask a client about their needs or ask a friend how their day is going, you are learning more about the person you are speaking to.
However, not everyone has the same capability to learn. Some individuals are better learners than others.
The problem most people face when it comes to learning:
They forget much of the information they learn and cannot retain it.
They are overwhelmed with the amount they need and cannot learn information.
This has quite severe consequences. If you forget a critical detail during a meeting with a potential client, that could be the difference between closing a deal and not closing a deal. If you can’t keep up with the content you need for your examinations, that could mean a loss of many opportunities and potential growth.
You can even learn while you’re sleeping! This concept is called sleep-dependent memory consolidation, and your brain spends time forming memories during the various stages of sleep.
Whenever information comes in, you are learning.
You are always teaching
The same goes for teaching. Even if you aren’t in front of an audience, dressed up formally, or giving a presentation, you still teach in other contexts.
When you tell others more about yourself, creating videos or writing articles, you take the time to teach your friends, colleagues and audience. When you meet someone for the first time, and you exchange introductions, you are now teaching the other person more about yourself. Two things can happen after you introduce yourself:
If you are not a good teacher, you won’t be able to introduce yourself in a compelling way. If you cannot simplify concepts and are too overwhelming to speak to during conversations, people will find it quite difficult to connect with you.
If you can master your ability to teach and make everything you teach relevant to whoever you are speaking to, you can establish immediate trust and rapport with whoever you are speaking to, making it easier for the other person to understand what you do and connect with you.
Whenever information comes out, you are teaching.
Your success is directly tied to your ability to learn and teach
A car’s ability to go far and fast is determined by two variables:
The car’s power, components and engine.
The driver’s ability.
Even with a Ferrari, the car won't go far if the driver can’t drive.
Likewise, with a much slower car, if a driver still has good skills, the car still won’t go far.
There is a Goldilocks zone of a fast enough car and competent enough driver.
This analogy can be extrapolated to learning.
If your learning is not effective or efficient, you will not be able to learn information quickly enough. You will always succumb to time pressures and others who can learn faster.
In conversations, this may come across as being a bad listener or someone who always forgets.
In class or professional development, you may not be able to keep up with the material because you cannot learn quickly enough and may forget too much information.
If your teaching is not effective, regardless of what you know and how much you know, no one will be able to understand you. (This is a cognitive bias known as the curse of knowledge bias, where we assume that since we understand a concept, others will also easily understand it.)
In conversations, if you have difficulty teaching and telling someone more about a topic, they may find it hard to connect with you.
In a class or professional development, you may not be able to teach your audience a concept in a relevant and meaningful way. This can cause the audience to not connect with you and often show signs of disinterest or disengagement.
It’s interesting, though, since the same effect can occur even if you are proficient and learning or teaching but not in both:
If you can learn too fast but cannot teach these concepts, you will never be able to demonstrate your knowledge mastery and expertise.
If you cannot learn fast enough but are able to teach the concepts very well, your effectiveness as a teacher will always be rate-limited by your learning speed.
How to get better at learning and teaching
With the right effort, persistence and approach, anyone can get better at learning and teaching.
The world’s best educators weren’t born with mastery over cutting-edge teaching skills, nor were the world’s best learners born with hyper-efficient learning skills. These skills are dependent on your nurturing and exposure to both angles.
There were 2 steps that I used to get better at both learning and teaching and how I plan on continuing to get better:
Step 1: Master learning first. Master teaching second.
As mentioned earlier, your ability to teach will always be rate-limited to what you know. Work on your ability to know more and know better first before you teach.
Getting better at learning is not an easy journey. This is true for most students, who have never been taught how to learn in their lives and have been thrown a bunch of things to learn first.
It’s like giving a car to someone who doesn’t have a license.
You need to work on getting your license.
Take the time to learn more about meta-learning and meta-cognitive principles. You can watch my newsletter by subscribing to learn more about these principles.
For example, research has proven that making the deliberate effort to connect and group information always produces higher-quality learning.
What this will look like in note-taking is using more arrows and trying to connect information. Transition into taking more mindmaps or using more arrows (→) in your notes. The problem with most learners is that their note-taking is very linear. What this means is that they make very few attempts to link information together and treat every concept as a single-standing idea.
For example, when you learn from a textbook, your goal should be to develop the author's expertise. The author knows that a chapter is a collection of related topics and concepts. If you represent your notes in an isolated manner, you will never develop the author's expertise and mastery.
Once you’ve learnt some techniques, make sure you spend the time to apply them to the information you need to learn. Reflect on your attempt, and keep iterating.
Learning how to learn is a lifelong journey, but it can also mean all the difference.
Step 2: Teach, don’t regurgitate.
Most of my high school teachers were just narrators.
All they used to do was memorise exactly what the textbook used to say and just repeat in class.
Every single student in my class found zero value in our class. Of course, we wouldn’t bring this up out of respect with our teacher, but it made me think about something.
Imagine you have finished a presentation. After the presentation, some audience members approached you and informed you that your presentation “was a waste of time.”
How would that make you feel?
The truth is that many people feel this way when being taught. You’ve probably felt this way during a class you hated. There is also the potential that someone had felt this way when they attended a class you hosted or when you introduced yourself to them. Of course, our goal isn’t to please everyone, but if most people feel overwhelmed, bored, or uninterested in you, it usually comes down to your communication and teaching skills.
Take the time to simplify and amplify whenever you speak (teach).
Simplify your words so people find it easier to understand, connect, and learn from you. Avoid using complex jargon, terminology, and words. Use analogies, stories, and examples to drive the bulk of your teaching.
Instead of:
”I assist in developing pedagogical proficiency and encoding ability of blue-chip CEOs, founders and executives.”
Keep it simple;
”I help people become better teachers by working on their translation skills. Most CEOs, founders and executives often speak a language their clients cannot understand. I help CEOs, founders, and executives translate their unique language into a language their clients can connect to, understand, relate to, and connect with.”
Work on your communication skills to amplify your words. Consult vocal training classes or pair with others keen on improving their communication skills.
I owe the bulk of my success to these two steps: learning how to learn and rehearsing my teaching skills. If you can take the time to schedule and deliberate practice with these two approaches, you will see a visible difference in your ability to learn and teach information.
If you’re serious about improving your learning and teaching skills, book a discovery call with me here.
Thanks for reading. I will see you all next week.
- Tanzeer.
