The things that I’m most qualified to teach are the things that I’m worst at.
Take procrastination for example. My particular genetic and cultural makeup ensured that focus would never be a strong suit. As a result, I went through basically every problem that someone who struggles through procrastination goes through. I ran into a ton of issues surrounding it, attacked it from a variety of angles, and got to a point where I can ship cool projects and do great work. Probably average or slightly above in productivity, but functional.
Meanwhile, when I teach overcoming procrastination, I can truly talk about the path you need to learn the material. When a student runs into an issue, its’ rare that it’s an issue I haven’t overcome myself (usually multiple times in different forms) and I can give excellent advice on a path to success.
Meanwhile, the things that I’m best at are the things I’m worst at teaching.
Take constructing conceptual models. It’s something that has always come naturally to me. Upon realizing that it was a particular strength of mine, I worked to hone it and understand it and push it to the limits. However, even with this deep understanding, I’m still not great at teaching it. I can tell people what it feels like, and my introspection on the parts of it, and all of the systems I’ve built to enhance it and the reasoning behind them.
But, I cannot tell them the path to go from not having the skill of conceptual model building to having it. It’s like breathing to me. If they run into a problem in acquiring the skill, I cannot help them overcome it because I never ran into it myself. It’s much harder for me to truly understand what it’s like to be someone who struggles with the skill.
While this seems accurate in these cases, I’m not sure how far this model generalizes. In domains where teaching mostly means debugging, having encountered and overcome a sufficiently a wide variety of problems may be important. But there are also domains where people start out blank, rather than starting out with a broken version of the skill; in those cases, it may be that only the most skilled people know what the skill even looks like. I expect programming, for example, to fall in this category.
The things that I’m most qualified to teach are the things that I’m worst at.
Take procrastination for example. My particular genetic and cultural makeup ensured that focus would never be a strong suit. As a result, I went through basically every problem that someone who struggles through procrastination goes through. I ran into a ton of issues surrounding it, attacked it from a variety of angles, and got to a point where I can ship cool projects and do great work. Probably average or slightly above in productivity, but functional.
Meanwhile, when I teach overcoming procrastination, I can truly talk about the path you need to learn the material. When a student runs into an issue, its’ rare that it’s an issue I haven’t overcome myself (usually multiple times in different forms) and I can give excellent advice on a path to success.
Meanwhile, the things that I’m best at are the things I’m worst at teaching.
Take constructing conceptual models. It’s something that has always come naturally to me. Upon realizing that it was a particular strength of mine, I worked to hone it and understand it and push it to the limits. However, even with this deep understanding, I’m still not great at teaching it. I can tell people what it feels like, and my introspection on the parts of it, and all of the systems I’ve built to enhance it and the reasoning behind them.
But, I cannot tell them the path to go from not having the skill of conceptual model building to having it. It’s like breathing to me. If they run into a problem in acquiring the skill, I cannot help them overcome it because I never ran into it myself. It’s much harder for me to truly understand what it’s like to be someone who struggles with the skill.
While this seems accurate in these cases, I’m not sure how far this model generalizes. In domains where teaching mostly means debugging, having encountered and overcome a sufficiently a wide variety of problems may be important. But there are also domains where people start out blank, rather than starting out with a broken version of the skill; in those cases, it may be that only the most skilled people know what the skill even looks like. I expect programming, for example, to fall in this category.
Agree, the model doesn’t fully generalize and lacks nuance. I think programming is a plausible counterexample.
Are you good at teaching people (your) existing conceptual models? (As opposed to how to make their own.)
I think I’m decent at it. I suppose you could answer this question better than I.