If it’s not already obvious by the new site title here at Learn This, I hope this site will be a resource for people to learn from. While I plan to publish a lot of articles on many topics (the planned queue is getting larger every day), I do this primarily to help others learn some of the things I’ve learned myself. Now some I’ve learned by watching others, some by trial and error, some I’ve learned by talking with or reading articles from others, and some I’ve learned just by practice and observation. In doing this over the years, I’ve learned that the best way to really learn something is to teach that same thing to someone else. Anytime you have to teach something, you are forced to plan, think and act on what you learned which really drives it home.

There is a LOT of other personal learning benefits to teaching and sharing what you know. Here are some of the advantages in teaching for the purpose of learning:

• When teaching you review content which refreshes your memory of the content
• You get asked questions so need to understand it in order to respond
• Teaching it often makes you ask questions and research or study things in more depth
• Its wonderful to have others appreciate your help and to see them learn
• Makes you feel great to share with others
• Teaching and learning exercise you memory which keeps the brain healthy longer in life
• Commit things to your long term memory to increase your knowledge
• Helps you give advice or information in various situations (depends what you teach)
• Provides great conversation starters talking about things you teach
• Most people are more interested in a person who can teach them something

Take this site for example, while it does take a lot of time to publish a site like this and I’d love to have people think it is simply generous to do so, its not all for the benefit of others, as you can tell from the list above. What are some other things you get out of teaching?