You Don't Need To Be an Expert To Share Your Learnings

For the longest time I thought I should be an expert to share my knowledge. Here are my thoughts and advice on how to change this mindset.

I have had a few attempts to share my my experiences on a blog and YouTube before I started this blog. I kept thinking "What if nobody reads this?" or "There are so many people who are much more experienced than me".

Even though I have fairly extensive experience teaching and mentoring others, for example as a math tutor during high school, tutoring several subjects throught my university time and mentoring first semester students, I always had an inkling of "What qualifies me to talk about this".

Luckily I could overcome this by changing my mindset towards sharing knowledge.

Perfectionism and fear of rejection

For the longest time, perfectionism has been something I struggled with. I strongly believe in providing the best service, product and info I can. I know many of you are very similar in this regard.

However, this can be detrimental when we are trying to share something that doesn't feel ready or good enough. Sharing something imperfect opens us up to riducule. This often leads us to not share our creations and knowledge at all. Reflecting on it, it often cames down to fear of rejection.

Thoughts like "What if someone tells me it's dumb/useless/not helpful" and "What if I missed a bit of information" kept me from sharing knowledge I found helpful, and products I thought could improve someones life.

Impostor syndrome also plays into this. Especially with knowledge based things to share.

Realizing "perfect" is an illusion - whether in regards to products or our knowledge about a specific topic - helped me overcome inhibitions towards sharing.

I have written an article about how to deal with the perfectionism trap as a developer. Check it out if this is something you struggle with as well 🙂

What and how to share

A small lifehack to getting over the idea something isn't good enough to share is sharing your experience.

Yes, maybe you didn't find the optimal solution to a problem, or maybe your knowledge has a few gaps (everyone's knowledge does by the way)... but sharing your experience is something nobody can argue with.

It's insight into your process and learnings however flawed they may be. At the end of the day sharing will provide an opportunity to improve with feedback.

Here are a few things you could share:

• Experiences with a specific situation
• How you dealt with challenges
• How you learned a specific thing or skill
• What works for you when doing a specific thing (advice)

How/where to share:

• Write a blog post
• Tweet about a learning
• Make a YouTube video about how you dealt with a situation
• Create TikToks
• Share insights in forums such as Reddit or Indie Hackers
• ...your platform of choice

Closing thoughts

The realization nobody is perfect, including you, made it easier for me to share my learnings.

I know not everybody will learn from what I have to share. But I also know there are many who are just a few steps behind me in their learning journey. These are the friends and people I want to share my knowledge with.

Sharing and writing down my learnings has a great sideeffect. Doing this, I actively reflect on my experiences, which gives me new insights and ideas.

I hope this article can inspire you to do the same 💪

If you liked this article and know a friend who could benefit from it as well, please consider sharing it 🙏 If you want to get news and updates from me, subscribe to the newsletter below 👇 or follow me on Twitter.