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Don’t be an expert

by Yann Girard — Get free updates of new posts here

Everybody constantly tells me that at some point in my life I have to decide what I want to be. It already started when I was a kid. A kid that didn’t know anything about life and its sheer endless opportunities. How can a kid decide what it wants be be one day? 

And people still keep telling me that you can’t just walk through life doing this and then doing that. You have to find a proper job to be able to feed a family, have kids, buy a house, have a nice car and a beautiful wife.

But did anybody ever ask me if I actually wanted any of this?

Even today I still feel like that little kid that doesn’t really know what it wants to be one day. I’ll soon turn thirty and I actually still don’t know what I want to be or how to explain the stuff that I’m doing right now.

But let me tell you the truth here. It doesn’t really matter what you want to be one day. Because making plans never really works out anyways. I’m absolutely convinced that we have to let go the life we have planned, to be able to accept the life that is waiting for us.

Only then might we be able to someday live a happy life.

There are just way too many cool things out there that one can do. After all we only have this one life, so why do the same things over and over again, for years and years when we’re absolutely free to choose whatever we want to be or do.

If your heart tells you that you should travel the world then just do it. If you want to learn how to paint then just do it. If you want to write a book then just do it. If you want to become a musician then just do it. If you hate your job then just quit it.

And what does it mean to know what you want to be or do one day anyways? To me it means that I’ll most probably turn into some sort of expert in one way or the other. A lot of people told me that being an expert is a great thing.

Then you’ll finally be somebody. People will pay you a lot of money to be an expert. You’ll be on the TV. You'll be in magazines. And one day you might become a famous CEO. But I don’t want all of this. I don’t want to be an expert. 

I want to be able to do all the things I feel like doing whenever I want to. I don’t feel the urge to master things on an expert level. With everything I do I want to reach a level that allows me to bring my projects to a certain level.

I’m the 80% guy. I’m not the 100% guy. I don’t feel like putting more than 20% of my time into one single thing I do. This might mean that I’ll be an amateur in most of the things I do forever. That's cool with me. 

But even more importantly, there’s something really good about being an amateur or a beginner that barely anyone ever talks about.

In the beginner’s or the amateur’s mind there are countless possibilities. There are countless possibilities to do new things. Countless opportunities to do things in a new, creative and innovative way.

In an expert’s mind on the other hand there are just a few solutions. The solutions the expert already knows. The ways of doing things the expert is already really good at. For an expert there are barely any possibilities. There are mainly dangers and risks.

There are no other ways than the expert way. Even if the expert might see some of the new and creative ways of doing things he won’t be able to use them because he would lose his expert status and be a beginner once again.

For an expert there is way too much at stake to try out new, creative and innovative ways of solving problems. If he does anything wrong while applying new ways all eyes are on the expert. The expert will be the one to blame. The expert is the one to lose his reputation.

That's what I'd like to call the expert dilemma.

The expert is stuck, whereas a beginner or an amateur can do whatever he wants. No one looks at the amateur. No one blames the amateur. The amateur is completely free to do whatever he wants to. 

The amateur can build an incredibly valuable skill base over the years that enables him to create things. A skill base that will make him free and independent. A skill base that enables him to work on his own projects.

A skill base the expert will never be able to build up over the years. The expert will always have to rely on employment. The expert can’t create things.

The expert is stuck in being an expert for the rest of his life until he decides to become an amateur again…

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