Talks and classes provide pressure and emotional fuel for understanding, but a lecture itself often has fairly limited impact. Ideally, you would compile your newfound understanding into some publishable notes or a book to increase your reach.
In many cases, it’s best to do this soon before or after the talk: your emotional connection is particularly high at that point, and all the material is loaded into your mind. Since doing these things in parallel is hard, the more obvious strategy is to write publishable text after giving a class, but then you may find the material relatively boring, and you may have little interest in rehashing it. It’s difficult to maintain emotional connection to a creative project across delays and breaks
There is one way to understand another culture, living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language. At some point understanding may come. It will always be wordless. The moment you grasp what is foreign you will lose the urge to explain it. To explain a phenomenon is to distance yourself from it.
Peter Høeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow
MN tells me that someone (Wheeler?) said that the best strategy for getting Feynman to write a book was to ask him to give a lecture on the topic, but again, I can’t find a reference online.
MN also told me that someone (Preskill?) said that the best time to write a text is when you’re giving a class on that topic. Can’t find the reference.