Why we mentor

I'm writing an undergrad course outline about a subject I think I know 'cold'...something I can do in my sleep...something for which I have years of experience. Yet, the blank page is hard to fill.

At what point do we cross the line between:

• consciously learning/trying to become proficient; and 
• having habits and processes that allow us to to perform what used to be complex (for us) tasks by rote?

Aside from the old saying "You don't know what you don't know"... sometimes it's equally true that you forgot what you knew and how you knew it!

I ran into this the other day when I tried to explain how to pull together a video script. I can sit down and write one but delegating the effort was hard! Not because I did not want to hand it off to someone (more creative than me these days) but because I couldn't remember how to breakdown the approach that I simply did by rote.

This is why we mentor, teach and coach. Not just to share or learn new things - but to remember what we know and re-examine it.