Why you should Open Source your knowledge
1. You’ll be able to know you’re wrong (and this is better than being right).
Most people in the world get paid to use their knowledge. Few people get paid to share their knowledge. We call these people “teachers”. Yet, most people paid to use their knowledge get a raise when sharing their knowledge (and become known for it). There is a direct correlation with the Open-Source world. An Open-Source Software is called this way when its source code is freely available to anyone. Attention here: Open Source doesn’t mean free, as well as free doesn’t mean open source. If Ford made available the design, pieces sizes and every detail in montage instructions these cars wouldn’t be free and people would keep buying from Ford even knowing how to build it. But how many people would learn how to repair, change and even improve their cars just by possibly read the source code?
So, here I’ve listed some reasons why you should open source your knowledge:
1. You’ll be able to know you’re wrong (and this is better than being right).
In modern society, everybody in social media wants to be right all the time. This reminds me of the incredible special “INSIDE” from Bo Burnham where he sings: “The backlash to the backlash to the thing that’s just begun. There it is again, that funny feeling. That funny feeling”. The funny feeling he is talking about is how odd it is, everybody already has a concrete opinion about everything. There isn’t even time to think about, to question yourself and your beliefs.
What people don’t always realize is that when you’re right, you are not learning anything. The best ideas don’t come from a single person, but from a group of people talking, criticizing, and discussing the idea. And it is only when you share it that you have the opportunity to learn you are wrong (or maybe that something could be better). When someone has the opportunity to get to know your open-source knowledge, they have the possibility to show you other points of view, missing information, or just an opinion. Don’t be afraid and do not think this is a personal attack. Not at all, this is someone also open sourcing their knowledge and sharing back with you. Every time you are wrong, it's a new growing step, even when you disagree.
2. You’ll get performance improvements
Just as Open-Source software, when other people can understand your project and your ideas, they will comment and make commits to your ideas, projects, knowledge. This makes you learn new skills and try new things.
At my job, when I started sharing my knowledge, every newcomer would talk to me to learn how things work. In the beginning, I enjoyed it because I had the opportunity to, each time, be clearer than the time before. But, after a while, it just got repetitive and I had less and less time. And sharing this with a friend, he gave me the idea to record the meetings and make a “Netflix on the intern process”. Now, not just in my team, but in many other teams I am known as ‘the guy who knows it’. This is easy, but I haven’t thought about it, and gave me so much time after I did it. Performance improvements.
3. Documentation for sharing as a Quality Control
While I’m exploring data, so many times I’ve been coding a little big monster: an inner join here, an outer join there, some sort, another join… you’ve got the idea. If I’m not sharing this with anyone, I would not revisit it at all, because I would know it just works. But if I knew somebody else will read my mess and keep this project going on, I’ll try to optimize, make it clear and straightforward and comment on what I’m doing.
And it’s not just commenting, but explaining too. If you have to explain to an executive or a new intern what your code is about, the documentation must be clear and direct. If anyone reads your project documentation and doesn’t understand it, it means your project doesn’t have value for this person. Commenting and Documentation just make things better.
4. It’s the best self-promoting tool for anti-self-promoting people
We all raise the flag against Self-Promoting people. We all know who they are, where they work, and what they think because they can’t stop talking. For anti-self-promoting people, the best promoting is when other people talk about you. Open Source your knowledge makes people understand you know things. They come for you looking for help. And, in a meeting where nobody knows the answer, people will talk about how to contact you, and you will help them.
I’ve read The Four from Prof. Scott Galloway where he says: “People are not loyal to companies. People are loyal to other people”. The habit of Open Source your knowledge is an invitation to people to learn from your own experience and make their experience less hurtful. They will be grateful. This can make people loyal to you, admire you, and open new doors.
5. This type of documentation is future-proof
Few things, software-wise, are future-proof. Every day you realize your newest skills are already outdated. Document your stuff, be open and clear about how it will help others and yourself in the future. Everything moves so fast that we forget almost instantly what we did last week. This method lets you write to the future self that will need this information and don’t know where to find it. Remember when you were in school, and you should write all the teacher said and then study for the test? That’s it.
6. Your mental-hard drive gets more free space
Our mind is full. Always full. Every day, we learn something (even when the thing you learned is that your middle-school not so close friend post on Instagram a new shirt she bought in Shein). As our mind gets full, we forget. So, documenting and Open Sourcing your documentation make your mind just free to learn more and more. Instead of a whole software installed in your head, you just need to remember where you save it. And, if you use a simple ads systematic approach to organizing your stuff, this isn’t so hard.
And now, what?
Just start today. I’m sure you can stop 1h once a week to document your stuff. In the beginning, it’s hard, but again, with a systematic approach for documentation and sharing, things start getting easier and easier.
Always try to be the person you would like to work with.
