There's something about having to explain to someone a concept that makes it clearer... and easier understood by the teacher during the process. Don't believe me?

Try this simple experiment. The next time you go to an event or a training session or watch an online course. Watch it as if your responsibility was to teach it and explain it to someone else afterward. And do just that.

Make a presentation of it and present it either to your team, to a friend, or your significant other. You will see that your level of attention and your focus will be two or three notches higher than before. And this is not a new principle.

Again, we can go back to antiquity with Seneca who said, while we teach, we learn. Recent studies show that students who teach others score higher, this being called the protégé effect. And there are many factors that lead to this.

For starters, your circle of influence significantly increases... when you are responsible for someone else understanding the information you share. Also, you will look at it from multiple perspectives and identify several ways to transfer your knowledge. That again gives you a much higher level of understanding of the concept.

Finally, you're emotionally linked to your students getting satisfaction when they understand your explanations... and being frustrated if they don't. And teaching doesn't need to be solely in this traditional form... teaching can be posting a blog post where you share your experience on a specific problem. Teaching can mean publishing a plugin, toolkit, something that will help others solve a problem or avoid it altogether.

There is no better way of understanding a new concept than sharing it with someone else.