Most people get buried with all their ideas unexpressed. They lived a rich life, full of experiences and hard-earned wisdom. They managed to live a good, virtuous life.

But they documented nothing.

The lessons may have been passed on to their children, but even they will have died in the not so distant future.

All your ideas and lessons may have immense value to one, maybe hundred, thousand, or even millions of people. Yet, the ideas die, when the person carrying them inside their head dies. Unless, you share them.

Become a Curator

In the book Share Your Work by Austin Kleon, he has a chapter called “Open Up Your Cabinet of Curiosities”. The idea is, that in the 17th century Europe, the wealthy and educated would have a Wunderkammern – a “wonder chamber”or a “cabinet of curiosities”. A room filled with rarities, interesting objects, to show off their thirst for knowledge. A kind of personal museum. And more than the objects themselves, the focus was on the taste of the collector.

If you think about it, we all have this kind of Wunderkammern, whether you know it or not. It’s the books you’ve read, the music you listened to, the movies you watched, the stories you collected. Nowadays, it doesn’t have to be a physical space, as we live in the digital age and most of our curiosities live on our computers and on the internet. Your social media feed is a Wunderkammern by itself. When you share the things you love to consume, it feeds your own work and understanding. You extract knowledge from your cabinet of curiosities. So become a curator. Of ideas, the things you love and all your wacky interests. People are interested in what other people are interested in.

You can share things on social media, create your own personal website, create videos and podcasts. Experiment with the medium to find which one suits you best. I do recommend creating your own website, as you’re not tied to third party platforms and you own hundred percent of your work.

Share Everything You Learn

If you share everything you learn, on some level, you’re contributing to the advancement of the human species. Books like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, or Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu are in their essence just wisdom accumulated over time, and then documented so it wouldn’t be forgotten.

Even though we tend to think our problems are unique only to us, that’s almost always never the case. To share your human experience is an act of service to others, and to yourself as well. You’ll have something to look back on in a couple of years, and marvel at your own progress and how much you have learned. It’s like having a public diary.

Share what you’ve learned, right after you learn it, so you remember what it feels like to not know it. This way you know exactly which steps are necessary, to learn what you’ve just learned. By sharing it, you’ll remember it better, because you have to articulate it. Masters are usually bad teachers, because they learned their lessons long time ago and don’t remember what it feels like not knowing them.

Share even the things you think are trivial. What you consider as a triviality, someone might consider groundbreaking. So what, that it has been said thousand times before? Your perspective is unique to you, and someone will prefer your way of doing things, over others.

I came up with a few guidelines to get started sharing your knowledge. Write these down for future reference, if you’d like:

• If it helped you, there is a good chance it will help someone else. Don’t try to focus on creating for the masses. Better approach is to try to teach it to your younger self.
• If it helps even just one person, it’s a success.
• When you’re excited to share something you found interesting with your friend, it’s probably worth sharing with the world.
• Have a place to write down your ideas. David Lynch said one thing that’s worse than death is forgetting a good idea. And you will forget.
• Don’t niche down. Share it all, even if the topics seem all over the place. Humans are multi-faceted. Be human.
• If you don’t know what to share, look at the things you do differently to other people in your circle.
• Be a human, not an idol. Share the tough times as well as the victories.
• Don’t try to be an expert if you’re not one. It’s best to position yourself as a student, trying to help other students.
• You don’t need to share every little thing from your life. It’s best to keep some things private. You decide what those should be.
• Don’t worry about criticism, you’re just sharing what you learned. You’re not trying to convince someone your way is the best way. Criticism reveals two things: gaps in your thinking, and that the work you put out was consumed by the wrong person. Embrace constructive feedback and dismiss the people who just didn’t get it. You are not here to please anyone, you are here to learn and share your story.