It happened at work again. Where we were showing somebody exactly how our process works and they couldn’t understand why we’d just give it all away like that.

“Do you know how many people we’ve showed this to who didn’t even do the part with it to even help themselves?”

I don’t have a lot of stuff that “just works” but I have a few things. And I’m not shy about being open with sharing them. It makes the world a better place, as best I can tell, because if somebody had shown it to me some years ago I’d have been all over it all the sooner.

I’ve seen a few quotes to describe this in the past.

The main one is from Thomas Jefferson. I’ll paraphrase, but it’s the idea that knowledge is like a candle. You can keep lighting new candles up with it all day long, and the original candle is no better or worse off for the share.

I think sometimes people worry sharing will dilute their edge. I respect this fear when it’s real. I also respectively reject that most of the time it is actually real. This is a personal philosophy. This post probably is making you feel that already.

There’s also the thought that far more often people like to pose like they have some big secret behind what they’re doing and they really don’t. In those cases, if you found out the secret to their success, you’d be disappointed or let down. There’s magic trick versions of this and charlatan versions of this, obviously, but it’s a reality I can’t unsee.

Which catches us up to the other day, after said “I can’t believe you’re just sharing this” conversation, when I was washing dishes and listening to Dennis E. Taylor’s 4th book in the Bobiverse series, where he dropped this line and - it’s perfect.

“The wonderful thing about knowledge is that you can give it away and still have it.”

If you have genuine state secrets, or material non-public information, or there’s safety barriers to something - keep it to yourself.

But if it helps move the world forward without dimming your light, share it.

Knowledge is special. Abundance is all the potentiality of what that knowledge could bring. If illumination is at all an option, even with some risk of accidentally catching some things on fire, give it away, give it away, give it away now.

ps. I am obligated to remind you, alongside that song, of Rick Rubin’s advice to Flea of, “Don’t go too notey.” There’s a sharing lesson within that, too.