Data by itself is garbage, which is why companies hire data scientists (real humans) to extract insights from raw data. Knowledge is a form of data. Therefore, knowledge by itself is also garbage. We need humans as a conduit for knowledge.
Knowledge is transmitted in different ways—in written form (books, blog posts), in audio form (podcasts), in visual form (videos), and in-person. Humans materialize their knowledge in these representations for others to consume. Each form has its pros and cons. Knowledge in writing is faster to consume but slower to produce. You can listen to podcasts while driving but it is easy to miss important points. Videos are the easiest to consume but producing them is costly. In-person knowledge transmission is interactive but they are not scalable.
In addition, all these ways of transmitting knowledge require exactly two human actors—a knowledge transmitter and a knowledge receiver. The interaction between the two actors could be synchronous or asynchronous. For example, knowledge transmitted via writing has always been asynchronous—a writer publishes a post, and then readers can read it on their own schedule.
Mentorship is a synonym of in-person knowledge transmissions—mentors transmit knowledge to mentees. It is an example of synchronous knowledge transmission and the two human actors are the mentor and the mentee.
My argument is that being a mentee is harder than being a mentor. To rephrase this claim in the context of in-person knowledge transmissions, it is harder to be the receiver than the transmitter. It sounds counterintuitive. As we know, it is much harder to write than to read, much harder to produce videos than to watch them comfortably on your couch. Why being a mentee, the one who consumes knowledge, is harder than the one who produces it?
Mentors are librarians. They are responsible for keeping and retrieving their hard-earned knowledge. Mentees are knowledge retrievers. They need to know what they want and communicate it to their respective mentor. If a mentee is not even aware of what they want from this library of knowledge, how could a librarian be helpful?
A good mentee needs to know how to get the most out of their mentor. It takes practice to be a good mentee.
Jake Klamka is an example of a good mentee. Read about him here.