[2021-04-18] Learning, teaching, mastering

I recently signed up for a weekly email from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. In his latest missive, he wrote:

The teacher learns more than the student.
The author learns more than the reader.
The speaker learns more than the attendee.
The way to learn is by doing.

This spoke to me. I often spend hours researching and writing a post that might take a reader only a few minutes to peruse. In the process of doing so, however, I learn so much more than if I simply read someone else's take on a given subject.

Sometimes when I'm writing about a topic, I realize that I don't understand it well enough to explain it to someone else. So I do more reading to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and to ensure that I comprehend it sufficiently to communicate it to readers.

In researching this post, I learned that scientists have dubbed this "the protégé effect." In a Time magazine article, Annie Murphy Paul, author of Brilliant: The New Science of Smart, states that researchers have found that:

Students enlisted to tutor others...work harder to understand the material, recall it more accurately and apply it more effectively.... [S]tudent teachers score higher on tests than pupils who are learning only for their own sake."

One of the ways researchers tested this concept was through the use of a computerized character—known as Betty's Brain—who learns, tries, errs and asks questions. The researchers discovered that:

Student teachers are motivated to help Betty master the material, so they study it more conscientiously. As they prepare to teach, they organize their knowledge, improving their own understanding and recall. And as they explain the information to her, they identify knots and gaps in their own thinking.

Students who instructed Betty spent more time reviewing the material and learned it more thoroughly.

This is consistent with my own experience. Not only do I develop a better understanding of a subject when I teach someone else about it, but I also recall it longer. I'm much more likely to remember content I wrote about in my Café Jen blog years ago than I am to recall an article I read even just a few weeks ago.

As Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman said, "If you want to master something, teach it."