I’ve been thinking a lot lately about teaching.
I’ve taught the Productivity Field Guide workshop three times now. Each year it gets better. Not because I’m a better teacher, though hopefully I am.
The workshop gets better because my students make it better.
The act of teaching it live sparks magic. Participants ask questions I didn’t anticipate. People get stuck on concepts I thought were obvious. They have breakthroughs on exercises I almost cut from the program. Every single one of these moments changes the content (and me).
This year we spent a lot of time on role statement exercises. I’ve used role statements for years, but watching a room full of smart people work through them, watching the moment it clicks, watching them rewrite their own statements forced me to think deeper about why this actually works.
Teaching forces clarity. When I’m writing alone, I can let things slide. I can tell myself the idea is there, even if the explanation is fuzzy.
But in a workshop, there’s nowhere to hide. If my explanation doesn’t land, I see it immediately. So I try a different angle. I find a better example. I cut the stuff that doesn’t matter and expand the stuff that does.
The questions also help me. Someone asks why a particular workflow matters. I try to answer but I can see it didn’t really land. I have to dig deeper, articulate what I actually mean. Often, my answer ends up better than anything I would’ve written at a desk.
The struggles matter too. When someone can’t make a technique work in their own life, that’s information. It tells me where the gap is between theory and practice.
This is why I’ll keep teaching workshops even though it’s more work. The content gets better. My understanding gets better. And the people in the room get something more useful than they would if I’d just written a book and mailed it to them.
Teaching forces you to question your thinking and assumptions. If you want to get better at something, teach it.
