Becoming An “Expert”
Oxford Languages defines an expert as: a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area. It’s taken from the Latin expertus, and is a past participle of experiri ‘try’. Other Latin dictionaries define experiri as:
- attempt, try
- find out
- prove, experience
- test, put to the test
Somehow in modern culture this word has started to mean something else. Experts have this expectation put on them that they are perfect, but that’s just not what it means. Being an expert does not make someone perfect, free from mistakes, or free from being wrong. However, from the word’s root meaning and definition, it’s clear that an expert is someone who attempts, tries, proves, puts something to the test. It’s someone who pushes through failures, mistakes, and even shortcomings to become tried and true. It’s someone who got back up after getting knocked down, over and over again.
Malcom Gladwell, in his book Outliers, made popular the 10,000 rule, meaning that once someone had 10,000 hours devoted in a field they could be an expert.
If you dedicate every moment of your 40-hour workweek throughout the entire year to honing expertise in a specific task, it will still require approximately five years to reach the 10,000-hour milestone.
I’ve never thought of myself as an expert but in recent years clients, friends, and family have started calling me an expert in my field. At the time of writing this I’ve been in the web design and marketing field for 10-15 years and have put in well over 10,000 hours. I’m still not comfortable calling myself an expert, but I’m warming up to it.
