The "Experience" Filter
I was talking to someone on Twitter today, and they mentioned that someone texted them and asked them to teach them about web3 and how to make money with it. Now, the person who received the text would experience PTSD and cringe.
They will do this because they will immediately recall how they began and how everything seemed like sorcery to them.
This flashback will last for a few seconds, and then it will cause hesitation, which will lead to an answer like "I am not sure I can teach you, it is a lot of experience; a lot of work, effort, learning curve, mistakes, pain, gains, failure, and many others."
Now, the person they have told this to will become enraged or offended, and they will quit.
In all honesty, being in the shoes of the person who was supposed to be the teacher is difficult, but from the perspective of the person who is supposed to be taught, it usually seems like a piece of cake or a walk in the park until they start learning it for themselves.
Did you do maths in school?
I started out my teaching career teaching toddlers who were 7 and 8 years. At the beginning most of the things I taught them were like sorcery, you could see the confusion in their eyes, but because it was my full-time job, I had enough time to actually discover ways to teach them them.
I began using stories, images, and children's ideologies, and most of them eventually understood.
Teaching web3 to a fully grown adult is similar to teaching toddlers who should be in second or third grade.
However, unless most (potential teachers) are motivated to do so, they will not have the time to do so for free, because the more difficult the knowledge, the more the teacher is required to do.
Teachers want to see students put forth effort, and this is one of the motivators that causes them to reconsider, particularly if they (students) are willing to shoot first and ask questions later.
What I mean by this is that when it comes to new things, people prefer to get directions first before diving in and figuring it out for themselves.
Although I agree that it is preferable to be tutored by someone else, unless tutoring is their full-time job, they will never have enough teaching time.
You cannot learn "experience" because experience is a series of interconnected events that teach and make you aware of things you previously did not know. You are supposed to pass "through"; lessons can be taught, but experience cannot.
People are taught theories in schools, and the majority of these theories are unrelated to real-world events.
Life is a treasure trove of knowledge waiting to be discovered, and the majority of the most difficult knowledge in the world is financially beneficial.
For example, if you do not do business with someone, you will not learn to be wary of trusting them. Many things cannot be taught; the learning process requires firsthand exposure, which takes a long time.
Pay for time experience
When you go to the mechanic, you cannot ask them to teach you how to fix your car. This is because they cannot "instill" 8 to 15 years of car repair experience in a few weeks or months. Even if they discovered a way to do so (which is impossible), you still need hands-on experience with cars to qualify as a mechanic, which will take years.
So, most of the time, the best option is to pay them to repair the car. You are not paying for the time it will take to repair the car; instead, you are paying for the experience required to repair the car.
Passing on one's experience to another is nearly impossible. Most people mistake knowledge for experience. While the former is required for the latter, the latter is a hybrid of the former and years of experience; failure and success.
I have gotten really bad at teaching over the years. I used to be very passionate about teaching and knowledge, but I have gotten really bad at explaining concepts that I have had experience with, unlike when I was a grade one teacher.
Although the knowledge was much simpler and easier, the concept of web3 is more difficult; it is not black and white, and the knowledge can contradict itself, which is why you need personal or firsthand experience.
To begin, I believe that those who are motivated to teach web3 knowledge are the most effective. There are numerous ways in which this can occur, but ordinary people who are actually very experienced and can be geniuses are usually motivated to teach anyone. Most of the time, these people can only give you crumbs, phrases, and incomplete statements, leaving you to figure it out for yourself.
Figuring it out.
"Figuring it out" is a trial-and-error learning process; while you will make many terrible mistakes and waste a lot of time, it is the best way to learn.
For example One of the hardest concepts to understand in crypto is how the market works and this is because the market is not static, it's dynamism makes previous knowledge almost obsolete, and unless you're having to learn, unlearn and relearn (which is a process) you'll be stuck with one form of knowledge which might not hold any futuristic value.
Most of the time, I simply tell people to figure it out. If you have crumbs of knowledge to start any industry in life, you must simply dive in head first. There is generally no motivation to teach, which is why you must personally prioritize gaining experience from your own first-person point of view.
Interested in some more of my posts
Why Is the grind getting harder?
Monopoly Is the Death of Civilization
Survival: Choas and Scarcity
Crypto: Gut & meaningful Connections
What is the primary barrier to entry in Web3?
What Are Some Things You Should not Do During A Bull Market Year?
That reminds me about how I learn (by trial and error) to succesfully invest in different projects. I use a little gimmick, and I tell people that in order to start investing, they need to be comfortable financially. So, I ask, how much you pay bills per month? If they say £1000, I tell them to save 6 months worth of bills on a separate saving accounts, and once they got this, they can start investing. Funny enough, I did have 2-3 people coming and showing me that they managed to save that amount. And I did teach them how to start. By reading 2-3 big books about accounting and finances. And then practice.
As for crypto (you want me to teach you 10 years of crypto activity in one day?) a similar request is needed (like invest a minimum amount in both BTC and ETH every month (a 50-100 into each) as you learn as much as you can about both of them and get used with the value going up and down. This will make you interested into finding more. There are errors in the process (I just bought 100$ of TRUMP to see what happens...). :)
This is the truth. If one is comfortable financially then they won't dwell on the losses they'll incur as they go. Funny enough these losses or little disappointments here and there might seem like a lot, but it's actually the experience gained that's the gem we acquire as we go.
This is really good. The theory or static knowledge they gain from reading eventually comes in handy, especially with people who do not even have any knowledge before they start learning knowledge they'll user later.
This is classic DCA example and it's very powerful during the bear market or when prices in the market are down. I recently just realized the power of compounding, and I hope to put this into practice as soon as possible.
It might just go up and down in the short run because it's a meme coin. However it's not just a meme coin, it's a presidential meme coin, so I think it might blow up in Q3 or 4.
Thanks for the wonderful comment
You are welcome.
If the teacher is on hive ,let he or she introduce the student to the hive community if the said student and keep up here on the block chain, then he or she deserves the attention of the teacher.
I have introduced a lot of people to Hive and they went ahead to dump it, stating how they can write a lot of words and get little or nothing from it . .
I pity then Sha they'd learn the hard way,so I don't blame anyone who decided that they can't teach anybody Web 3 , some students are just lackadaisical and would give a lot of excuses when they don't see results in a month or two.
So please let the student go find another trade to venture in or pay for the classes if they're really interested in learning.
It just proves my point: anyone who wants to truly learn will personally put in the work by themselves, else they'll hardly get far in anything. People will not take learning seriously unless they have to do it by themselves. Teaching is hard, that's why being self-taught the way you can learn. People will need to spoon-feed themselves before others can see their efforts and help perhaps them.
☺️☺️
And here I was convinced that crypto was nothing short of sorcery... lol Experience is only gained through doing, and when someone can't do it anymore, they teach. But no matter how much experience you have to share until the pupil engages they won't really learn it. Web3 is something you can point someone in the right direction, but it's a learn as you go thing. I still learn new things almost every day and I've been at crypto for years now.
Good for you for having been a passionate teacher at one point. Not something I've ever enjoyed doing myself. However, there are some subjects that I might consider teaching relative to my former career!
Loool way back, crypto and web3 felt like nothing short of sorcery. It gets clearer the more we engage. The deeper we go, the more we realize that there's more. It's just like onions where there's a layer inside one of the bulbs and so on.
Oh I was a passionate teacher, perhaps it was because it was my 9 to 5. I did it for over 10 years of my life, it hardly pays the bill, but there's a passionate fulfillment that comes with it.
Yeah that's what I thought. If you were opportuned to teach a career, it'll feel like you're reliving your experience to a set of newbies and all that.
The comparison between teaching math to children and teaching web3 to adults reminds me of how mobile devices are no days design that the intention for even childrean at early age can use them, I remember when I started learning about blockchain and felt completely lost even with the basics but Hive makes things a bit easier or at least now with the Gmail sing up. Not even all the tutorials and guides never really work until you've actually spent time making mistakes in the field I think this applies to almost any field with a certain degree of difficulty not just web3 or cryptocurrencies, I hope history repeasts in the case of Hive and goes much more higher
Yes, Hive makes things simpler, but I wonder why some people would think Hive is harder, when you can simply hop in and learn a few things in a couple of months.
Web3 is huge and sometimes average person might need like 5 to 10 years to begin to have a pretty good understanding of what's actually happening.
There are no tutorials that'll actually work, sometimes they serve as only a guide, and won't really help as much.
I really like how you explain how hard it is to teach something like Web3 like any other concept that is experience bound, especially when you’ve gone through the struggle yourself. It’s like teaching kids. It takes patience, time, and real effort. Many people just want a shortcut, but they don’t realize that experience can’t be taught, only lived.
What people don't understand is that you pay people not for their time, but for the years they spent learning and failing. In the end, it’s all about figuring things out of yourself, bit by bit, mistake by mistake, and how you utilise them to your advantage.
Exactly. When it comes to profession, we actually pay people for their experience and not their time. This is because time can be given, but sometimes time given or taken cannot guarantee the acquisition of experience. This is why people sell experience or exchange it for money.
For me, I learn as I go, and unbelievably I still have a thousands things I've not learned. I'm making my own mistakes and learning from them, I think this is how experience should be acquired
Sometimes, I do wish that I had someone I know teach me when starting out on web3 a few years ago. I think the learning journey would have been a bit faster but I'm not sure if I will take it seriously unless I was really interested back then. The student has to at least be interested in learning web3 to stick around when it gets complicated.
I like the figuring it out approach, it's a hands on way to gather experience.
Well, I wish I had someone too. I realized I missed a lot because I didn't have anyone to guide me. Most times this only means that we now have to spend a lot of time for something that's not supposed to take that much time. Imagine if I knew how the market worked in 2021, perhaps I could have been in a comfortable position, but it has taken me an extra 4 years, something I could have learned in 6 months.
When people are their own teacher, they have no option but to learn better and smarter.
That's exactly it! The time aspect. It takes longer to achieve the position you envision for yourself. Learning through trial and error is very costly time wise.
A lot of things require trial and error. There is so much to learn, and there is only so much you can do with reading some guide by someone else. I think its tough to give someone all the information as projects can be quite different too.
Yes, we cannot "give" every information because time and season changes by the day. Experiential knowledge for me is the best.
Teaching in general is a lot of work and it takes the students , an extra interest before they can learn it and go through with it