If you work in IT, there are a few things which I know are true about your job even if I’ve never met you:
- You are busy. You have enough work for you, your clone, and your clone’s cousin. Same goes for your coworkers (and their clones and cousins).
- You know things. Maybe a lot of things. If you have worked in IT for more than a month, you have a few tricks up your sleeve that other people who “know computers” will never have heard of.
- You hold the things which are known – by you, your coworkers, their clones, and cousins – in very high regard. The things you know are what make you valuable as an IT professional.
Knowing all of that, I understand how what I’m about to say may shock you:
Give. It. Away. All of it.
Despite being busy. Despite the fact that the person you are going to give away all your hard-won knowledge may not have “put in their time” or “earned their stripes”. Despite the fact that if TWO of you know the tricks, there’s a chance that you may not be as valuable. Despite all of that.
Because I know something else: You are wrong.
You are not too busy to give your knowledge – to write or podcast or vlog or just sit someone down and TELL them (ewwww! How ANALOG!). You are not too busy for that.
Because in sharing what you have, you will gain. In spreading what you know, you will never lose. In giving away for free the things which cost you in the precious coin of time and sweat and tears you increase rather than decrease the value of it.
In fact, giving may be the greatest gift you ever receive.