alt Hacker News> we do need ways to stay mentally sharp in the age of AI.
Here's my advice: if there's someone around you who can teach you, learn from them. But if there isn't anyone around you who can teach you, find someone around you who can learn from you and mentor them. You'll actually grow more from the latter than from the former, if you can believe that.
I think there's a broad blindness in industry to the benefits of mentorship for the mentors. Mentoring has sharpened my thinking and pushed me to articulate why things are true in a way I never would have gone to the effort of otherwise.
If there are no juniors around to teach, seniors will forever be less senior than they might have been had they been getting reps at mentorship along the way.
Replies
I haven't heard this benefit for mentors clearly articulated before (probably just missed it), but definitely felt it - I guess it's a deeper version of how writing/other communication forces clarity/organization of thoughts because mentorship conversations are so focused on extracting the why as well as the what.
A long-standing truth in martial arts circles has been that you can't advance beyond a certain belt before you teach classes.
It's purely because of the fact that if you can't teach something, you really don't understand it.
And the act of having to simplify and break down a skill to explain it to others improves your knowledge of it.