You don't know it until you've done it

My wife came home frustrated from her computer science class. She understood the concept in theory but couldn't make it work in practice.

I remembered that feeling. Early in my career, I read so many books. I could explain design patterns, recite SOLID principles, draw architecture diagrams. But when I sat down to actually build something, I'd freeze. The gap between knowing and doing was huge.

DHH has this tweet I keep coming back to: you can understand kickflips all you want, but until you've fallen off that skateboard a hundred times, you haven't learned anything.

Same with leadership. I've read all the frameworks. Studied the strategies. But leadership is built in actual decisions with actual people. The reading helps, but it's not the learning. The learning happens when you screw up a difficult conversation and have to figure out what went wrong.

Knowledge without practice is just trivia.