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The Protégé Effect
The protégé effect is a psychological phenomenon where teaching, pretending to teach, or preparing to teach information to others helps a person learn that information.
Callum Carver
May 11, 2024
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Few things are as persuasive as your own BS, while nothing is easier to identify than other people’s BS.”
THE PROTÉGÉ EFFECT
320 Words | 1 Min 10 Sec Read
The protégé effect is a psychological phenomenon where teaching, pretending to teach, or preparing to teach information to others helps a person learn that information.
When you teach, you pay closer attention to what you learn and identify knowledge gaps that help you learn faster.
This is because you have to think of the thing from a different perspective; you have to break it down into small enough chunks in order to teach it to someone from scratch.
This act of breaking it down and reassembling it allows you to understand it better yourself.
Have you ever had it where you’ve had to explain something to a friend or a family member and, as you’re explaining it, you realise that you’re actually teaching yourself something too?
Well, that is because of the protégé effect.
The psychology behind it is fascinating; expecting to teach and teaching can lead to increased metacognitive processing, which makes people more actively aware of their learning process, an increased use of effective learning strategies, and increased feelings of competence and autonomy.
All of this gives you the ability to self-learn; how can you use it yourself?
Either learn with the intention to teach, students who learn the material with the intention of teaching it later perform better when tested on that material than those who learn it just for themselves.
Or once you learn, pretend that you’re teaching it to someone else who is clueless on the subject; speak to the mirror, a wall, no one, but explain it as if you’re teaching them everything you know.
ACTIONABLE NEXT STEPS:
Try it yourself.
Take a subject that you’re learning and pretend to teach it to someone.
It's even better if you can find someone who will listen to you and respond with questions because those questions make you come up with answers that you didn’t even know you had, further reinforcing your knowledge of the subject.
TAKEAWAYS:
The protégé effect is a psychological phenomenon where teaching, pretending to teach, or preparing to teach information to others helps a person learn that information.
The more you teach, the more you learn.
LESSON OF THE DAY ⤵️
“How do you strike a balance between working toward your goals and enjoying every day as an enjoyable adventure on its own merit? Not in a job perspective more like late teen perspective.”
It’s all about planting seeds of opportunity for the future self to enjoy the fruits of.
It should go without saying, but you only live once. You need to make sure you’re enjoying every passing minute while also setting your future self up for a home run.
As long as you’re not destroying your future but instead preparing for it, you should feel no shame or guilt about embracing every present moment because you never know when it will be your last.
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