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English Says "Self-Taught", Not "Self-Learned"

Not everyone who is good at something knows how to teach it. If you know how to learn, you can take what you need from anyone, just by watching and asking.

August 28, 20263 min read

I often meet someone who is good at something and say: teach me.

The usual answer is: I wouldn't know how to teach it.

And I say: you don't need to teach. Just do what you normally do and let me watch. I'll ask when I need to.

Why this works

That one skill means you are no longer dependent on whether the other person knows how to teach.

Being good at doing something and being good at explaining it are different abilities. If you can only learn from people who can teach, you have ruled out most of the people worth learning from.

If you can observe and ask good questions, anyone becomes a source.

A detail in the language itself

Notice that English does not say I learned it myself. It says I taught myself.

A musician who learned alone is a self-taught musician: someone who taught themselves.

That phrasing carries something important. Teaching yourself is not sitting still and waiting for knowledge to soak in. It means playing the teacher's role for yourself: choosing the material, choosing the order, knowing where you are weak and what needs repeating.

Understand a little about how teaching works, and you can teach yourself a great deal.