You understand the authentication flow. You have worked inside it for months, you can fix things in it, and if somebody asked, you would say yes, I know how that works.
Then a new starter asks you to walk them through it, and somewhere around the second refresh token you hear yourself say and then it sort of does the handshake again, and you realise you have been carrying a picture with a hole in the middle of it.
That is the whole trick, and it is available to you every week. Explaining a thing is the fastest way to find out whether you actually know it, and it is more honest than reading about it again, because reading lets you nod along at the parts you never quite got.
The reason it works is structural. In your head, knowledge is allowed to be a cloud. Out loud it has to be a line. You have to put things in an order, name each piece, and say what causes what, and the exact spot where you speed up and wave your hand is where the cloud was hiding a gap. Everyone does this. The skill is noticing it instead of hurrying past.
So build a few of these into your month. Offer to write the onboarding page for the part of the system you work in. Take the fifteen minute slot nobody wants at the team session. Answer the question in the channel properly instead of sending a link. Sit with the new person and narrate what you are doing.
A few things make it sharper. Explain to somebody who will interrupt, because a polite nod teaches you nothing. Write it down first, since writing catches the hand waving that speech lets through. And keep a short list of the questions you could not answer, then close them one at a time. Two or three per session is normal and they are the most valuable thing you take away.
The usual objection is that you are not senior enough to teach. You are one week ahead of somebody, which is frequently the best possible distance. You still remember what was confusing about it. The expert forgot years ago.
– Asael Shinder
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