What Does It Take to be an Expert

Applying The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition to your own life

We all want to be good at everything that we do. But how many of us are committed to becoming experts? Common belief is that it takes 10,000 hours of repeated practice to reach such heights. If you were to work at a new skill for eight hours a day, five days a week after five years, you would get to that number. It’s a slow process.

The Beatles, for example, were not very good musicians when they started out. But playing night after night and for hours on end in Germany at the beginning of their careers developed their individual skills and helped them form a musical bond that allowed them to anticipate what the others would do next. It is part of what made them a great band.

If you want to be good at anything, you need to be committed to work when others are not. Put in the effort to enhance your skills and challenge your abilities. In most cases, people are content with being beginners or playing at the intermediate level. But to turn your skills into profits, you can not settle for that.

The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition defines five steps from novice to mastery:

The Beginner works on tasks mechanically and often requires guidance all along the way.

At the Intermediate level, the person sees progress as a series of steps. And they can usually complete simple tasks without help.

Someone who is Competent can work independently and deliver good results, though these may be inconsistent.

If you are Proficient, you have a deep understanding of the subject. You are often able to complete associated tasks to a high skill level.

When you are Expert, you find it easy to achieve excellent results.

So, what does The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition mean in real terms? Let’s take playing the guitar as an example. At first, you are excited at the thought of you and the guitar making sweet melodies together. You imagine jamming to your favorite songs or performing at the local amateur night with friends.

You get yourself an inexpensive instrument and find a teacher. Then, practice what the teacher tells you to do for a while. Six months to a year later, using the practice routine that was set up for you, you can play a few songs. You surprise your friends and yourself by entertaining them with four or five simple tunes. That gives you the courage to continue.

At the intermediate level, you can make up your own practice routines. Maybe you’ve combined ideas from a variety of teachers and now feel more confident accompanying recordings or playing with others. You still flub frome time to time. However, you can often identify your weaknesses, and maybe you know why you have these problems. By now, you may have both an acoustic and electric guitar, and know the difference between a well crafted and poorly built ax.

Once you become competent, you may be comfortable teaching beginners. Afterall, you have learned a lot and progressed further than most. You may be writing your own songs, starting to experiment with diferent genres of music, and practicing to emulate some of your favorite guitarists.

You have a songbook in your head and can entertain a crowd. You may even be invited to play with more skilled players, take that opportunity. This is how you are going to level-up, challenging yourself beyond your expectations. It is probably at the competent level that you begin to develop your musical signature, the sound that makes you unique. As a writer, it was at about the three year point where I was able to understand why I write the way I do, seeing the ideals I had about my style embodied in my writing.

When you reach proficiency you may embrace ideas like — Music is the space between the notes. Or Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.

Your knowledge of music theory will grow too. You will have a deep understanding of your ability and read the musicians you play with, like John, Paul, George and especially Ringo. When working with less skilled players, you may still be able to remember how you overcame the difficulties you hear in their efforts, and offer valid advice. Usually, the expert has forgotten many of these things in pursuit of the infinite possibilities that they can see in the future.

That expert seems to play effortlessly. They are one with the music using the instrument as a channeling device to get what is in their heart to come out of the instrument. They may work harder than anyone else, but the joy they get from playing is clear to anyone that hears them play. Whereas, the beginner, or intermediate level player will be happy just getting through a song with fewer mistakes than last time and staying on tempo.The expert is never satisfied that they have learned enough, practiced enough or played well enough. There is always room for improvement.

Everybody wants to be an expert, but most are unwilling to invest their time to reach such high levels. So what does that mean for subject matter experts, like writers, artist and seasoned professionals? If you want to leverage your expertise, keep going.

Last week, I read somewhere that if you want to be a good writer, write for five years. It doesn’t matter how well you write at the beginning, five years later you will be good. You will have learned countless useful lessons, increased your speed, and have the ability to write well about a variety of topics. Five years of writing stories will give you that.

So whatever it is you want to be, a subject matter expert, a writer, a coder or a financial expert, you can do it. Just stick with it. Don’t expect too much too soon, and enjoy the process. Learn the lessons required to move from level to level. And pay it forward whenever you have a chance. You’ll be glad you did.