Dedication and the Business of "Developing Expertise"

What does it take to become a successful blogger? To become a successful writer?

Perhaps these are questions that are best answered by coming at them from a different angle. Let's instead have a look at what it takes to become a bona fide expert at something.

There's lots of information and advice online that will tell you that it takes approximately five years for somebody to become an expert in their field. This translates roughly into 10,000 hours or basically dedicating yourself to working 40 hours a week at your chosen subject, for five years.

At least this was the general rule of thumb proposed by visionary author Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers."

Perhaps this is a fairly good rule of thumb, but it's not always that simple. Depending on which field you're in, to truly master a particular skill might take less than 10,000 hours or it might take as much as 20,000-25,000 hours.

Regardless of which one you believe, we all tend to start off at the novice level, and depending on whether or not we're fast learners, we're going to spend so time there. In my own case, I spent rather a lot of time there!

Then we go through various stages of being beginners, which is often a "dangerous" phase during which we credit ourselves with knowing far more than we actually do. Perhaps this happens because we think we are "clever enough" to come up with some shortcuts... trust me, it's been done before. You're not that clever!

And then we go through various stages of having some degree of competence, and I would have to say this is the stage when most people decide that "becoming an expert" perhaps isn't as important as they originally thought. And we become happy staying at "competent," because we realize that we are definitely "better than many," and that will just have to be good enough!

So how does this relate to blogging and writing?

Much like everything else, writing is one of those things where you just have to "put in the work" and there really aren't any shortcuts. You might wonder what it would take to become "an expert at Steemit" and that's not easy to answer... after all, what do you want to be expert at?

Maybe you can call yourself "expert" when you're written 5,000 top level blog posts. But that makes me want to ask "But did you engage with other people's posts? Were you a good curator?"

Which raises the question that always creates uncertainty: How do we define what "being an expert" actually means?

I'm pretty sure I'm not an expert at Steemit, nor an expert at blogging.

I might have the highest non-expert experience: a high level of proficiency. However, proficiency is not the same as expertise. Sure, I may have been blogging since 1998, but there is a lot I don't know about this gig, even so!

What I do know at this point is that applying myself has been a central part of the journey... and I force myself to "show up," even when I am tired and don't much feel like it! Consistency is perhaps the most important thing with can strive for, if expertise truly is what we want to get to.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about you? Have you ever tried to become an expert at something? ARE you an expert at something? How long did that take? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2023.11.15 23:06 PST
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