[2022-11-10] Becoming an expert

In a recent Instagram post, Atomic Habits author James Clear quoted Nobel-prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr, who said: "An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."

That got me thinking about my areas of expertise. Three that came to mind were blogging, leading people, and organizing and managing processes. In all three cases, I spent years honing the skills that made me effective in these areas, and making lots of mistakes along the way. I didn't devote weeks or months to studying these subjects; I learned what I learned almost exclusively from doing, reflecting and choosing different approaches to avoid making the same mistakes.

This contemplation led me to a TIME article on How to Become an Expert at Anything, According to Experts. While I'm not looking to become an expert in any new fields, I took away several useful insights from this piece:

  1. Commit to being in it for the long haul. Even when practising the same amount, people who commit to a given area of expertise will be more successful than those who don't. Eric Barker, author of the TIME article and the book Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong, notes: "doing something for a long time probably correlates with being decent at it but that’s not the point. Committing in advance to being in it for the long haul made all the difference."
  2. Find a mentor. Barker cautions: "Merely finding someone to help you that is already an expert doesn’t cut it." He clarifies: "your mentor needs to care about you."
  3. Practise in the real world. Barker writes: "Not only will you be better prepared, but you learn much better when the context you practice in matches the context you will eventually perform in." This is what Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel Mike Kenny calls "Train like you fight." For example, if you're preparing for a presentation in front of a group in a conference room, practise in front of a group in a conference room.
  4. Work in your discomfort zone. "Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow," states Barker. Instead of rereading text four times, try reading it once and making a summary or testing yourself with flash cards.
  5. Get negative feedback. Barker points to the example of the Navy Seals, who review their performance after every mission. He quotes Navy SEAL platoon commander James Waters: "When you go out on a mission, you always acknowledge your successes but much more important than that is you take a hard look at your failures and are willing to accept criticism."
  6. Reflect. You can be your own source of feedback, suggests Barker. A common trait of top performers is reflection—thinking about what they did and whether or not it worked.
  7. Study less, test more. Barker recommends the Rule of Two-Thirds: "Spend only one third of your time studying. The other two-thirds of your time you want to be doing the activity. Testing yourself." Barker quotes Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code and The Little Book of Talent: "Our brains evolved to learn by doing things, not by hearing about them. This is one of the reasons that, for a lot of skills, it’s much better to spend about two thirds of your time testing yourself on it rather than absorbing it."

Much of this advice is pertinent to my current obsession—learning Portuguese. My primary learning tool, Duolingo, spends little time explaining the language (each module includes a very brief tips section, which is not mandatory to read before jumping into the lessons); instead, Duolingo throws learners into the deep end, presenting new vocabulary and almost immediately testing learners' ability to read, write, listen to and speak the language.

Learning even the basics of Portuguese will better prepare me to mentor a Portuguese-speaking friend who is trying to learn English. In fact, in my efforts to help my friend, I'm helping myself. I recently started writing down the vocabulary I'm learning in Duolingo. I created a three-column table that captures words and phrases in English, Portuguese and French. I included the French column because my friend's son goes to French school, but I'm benefiting just as much. In many cases, I'm able to anchor new Portuguese words to my existing French lexicon, which is helping me to better retain what I'm picking up in the app.

I'm also seizing opportunities to use my Portuguese. When I text or email my friend, I write in English but provide a translation in Portuguese (thank you DeepL). By reading the translation, I learn new words that come up frequently in conversation. And I also use whatever words I can remember when talking with my friend and when sharing new vocabulary with my family.

I don't expect to ever become an expert in Portuguese. But I can apply tips for developing expertise in my quest to learn something new: commit, find mentors, practise in the real world, get comfortable with making mistakes, accept feedback, reflect and learn by doing.