I think this really cannot be understated. It will help you get ahead and in many, many different ways while also strengthening your base knowledge and understanding of the subject matter.

I guess I should have put more than 10 seconds in to my first reply, but I totally agree. That's the hard part.

Now I'm in a senior role I spend most of my time explaining what has to be done. All the hows and whys take a long time to explain thoughtfully. If all you can do is "I'm smarter than you and I say so" that's not a good explanation.

I know we like to complain how meetings and presentations take up valuable programming time, but without them there's no way to explain to a CEO what unit tests are for, or why we're now adopting JQuery and removing Prototype from our 5 year old application.

It's always possible, but you have to be aware of what everyone else who supports your organisation values.