They asked you how to do it. You meant to show them.

You even started well. You talked through the first step, pointed at the screen, kept your voice patient. Then somewhere around the ninety-second mark, your hand landed on their mouse. Two minutes later it was done. They said thanks. You said "any time."

And they'll take you up on that, because "any time" is exactly what you taught them. Not the skill. The dependency.

What that actually is

The easy read is impatience, and that's not quite it. You weren't annoyed. You were fluent. Doing the thing is a language you speak without thinking, and explaining it is a language you barely speak at all. Given a choice between fluency and stammering, you chose fluency — with their mouse in your hand.

Always Teach is the commitment this moment breaks against. Most people hear "teach" and picture a role: classrooms, mentorship programs, somebody with a curriculum and a title. If that's what teaching is, you're off the hook. Nobody assigned you students.

But almost nothing you know arrived that way. It came from someone who let you fumble through it while they stood there not taking over. Teaching, most of the time, isn't a role. It's what's supposed to happen in the ordinary hand-off — the moment someone asks, and you decide whether they leave with the skill or with your phone number.

Why the usual fix doesn't take

The first fix is documentation. You'll write it up — a checklist, a how-to, a recorded walkthrough — and then nobody has to ask.

Some things should be written down. But a document answers the questions people already know how to ask, and the reason they came to your desk is that they don't. What they needed was to try it in front of someone who could see exactly where their understanding breaks. No document has ever watched anyone work.

The second fix is "watch me." You slow down, you narrate, you let them observe a real one end to end. It feels generous, and it's the same move as taking the mouse, performed politely. Watching you be good at something teaches them that you're good at it. Their hands learn nothing.

There's a quieter problem underneath both fixes, and it deserves to be said plainly: part of you likes being asked. Being the one who knows is a comfortable place to stand, and every skill you hand over is one less reason for anyone to come find you. Nobody frames it that way in their own head. It just shows up as "it's faster if I do it" — for years.

Paul told Timothy how knowledge is supposed to move: "What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also" (2 Timothy 2:2). Four generations in a single sentence — Paul, Timothy, the faithful, the others. Look at the verb he chose. Not show. Not impress. Entrust — which means it leaves your hands, and it was always supposed to.

So here's the split. Always is the part that doesn't bend: knowledge that stops with you was never the point of having it, so on purpose, at regular cost to your own speed, you hand over the controls and stay in the room.

Style is the part that has to flex, because there is no one right way to teach and you were built with a particular one. Some people teach by asking questions until the learner finds it themselves. Some teach by one clean demonstration followed by a real hand-off. Some are built for the one-on-one moment of need; others come alive explaining something to a room. Copy a teaching style that isn't yours and you get the stiff, scripted thing everyone tunes out. Yours is the one that doesn't feel like teaching while you're doing it.

The practice

Give the task back at the halfway point. Start it together, then physically hand over the controls — the mouse, the pan, the wheel, the spreadsheet — and don't take them back, even when it gets slow. Especially when it gets slow. If you're wired to jump in: put your hands somewhere with a job — a coffee cup, your pockets — because they will reach without asking you first. If you're wired to over-explain: one instruction at a time, then silence until they've tried it.

Let the wrong version live for a minute. When they do it differently than you would — not incorrectly, just differently — leave it alone. Correct only what actually breaks something. If you're precise by nature: decide before you sit down which two things are worth correcting, and release the rest. If you're easygoing by nature: make sure you do correct the two that matter. Agreeableness that never corrects anything isn't teaching either.

Narrate one thing you do on autopilot. Pick a skill you've stopped being able to see — the way you open a hard conversation, prep a Saturday breakfast, plan a week — and walk one person through it out loud, including the parts that feel too obvious to say. Those are usually the parts they're missing. If you process out loud anyway: just aim it at someone instead of the air. If you think best in writing: write the steps first, then talk them through it — but the talking is the teaching, not the page.

Pick one person for this season. Not a program. One person, one skill, a few weeks. Your kid and the grill. The newer coworker and the client call. Someone at church and the thing everyone assumes somebody else will teach. If structure helps you: name the skill and put a recurring twenty minutes on the calendar. If structure kills it for you: just decide who it is, and let the moments find you — deciding is what makes it a commitment instead of an accident.

The close

This week someone will ask you to show them, and inside two minutes your hands will want the mouse. Keep them in your lap and find out what the other person's hands can do.

Always Show Up As You.