BookYol

Concept

Teach What You Know

Teaching what you know is the practice of openly sharing your methods, tricks and hard-won lessons with the people who could use them, on the principle that explaining how you work makes you more trusted and more sought after, not more replaceable.

Many professionals guard their methods for fear that someone will copy them and no longer need them. Austin Kleon argues the opposite in Show Your Work!: as soon as you have learned something useful, pass it on to the people who could use it. Sharing a technique rarely gives away the thing people actually pay for, which is judgement, experience and the ability to apply the method to their own messy situation. What it does give away is proof. A clear explanation shows that you understand your craft well enough to make it simple, and it gives people a reason to remember your name the next time the problem comes up. Teaching also sharpens the teacher, because explaining exposes the gaps in your own understanding. Kleon pairs this with opening your cabinet of curiosities: sharing the books, tools and influences behind your work, and always crediting them. Mark W. Schaefer makes a similar point in Known, where consistently helpful content is how a space is earned and held. The test of a good teaching post is simple: could a reader act on it tomorrow without hiring you? If so, they are more likely to hire you.

A real-life example

Levent, a financial controller at a food manufacturer in Konya, worried that sharing his month-end closing checklist would make him less valuable. He posted it anyway, with a short note on each step and the mistakes it prevents. Dozens of accountants saved it, several wrote to say it had cut days from their close, and two companies asked whether he could set up the same process for them as a consultant.

How to use it

  1. 1Write down one method you use often that took you years to get right.
  2. 2Explain it in steps a capable newcomer could follow, including the mistake each step prevents.
  3. 3Share it with a note crediting where you learned it, and invite questions.