Expertise... because I'll want something to read later after moving house all day.

[ewt]

What do you consider yourself an expert at? Why?

Studies show that most world-class experts in any field have spent at least 10000 hours working on the related skills. No, I don't have a citation to hand... What have you spent 10000 hours or more learning or practising? That's 3 hours a day for 10 years.

How much overlap is there between these categories?

Do you consider yourself a specialist or a generalist? Why?

Is expertise absolute or relative?

Comments

[martling.livejournal.com]

I guess I am probably a computing/electronics expert by that metric.

That's a hell of a broad field to be expert in though, so in that sense I would consider myself a generalist.

And I like being a generalist. I think that sort of expertise lends itself better to adaptability.

Expertise is absolute in the sense of "what can you do?", but relative to what others can do in the sense of "what skills do you have that are valuable?"

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Expertise is absolute in the sense of "what can you do?", but relative to what others can do in the sense of "what skills do you have that are valuable?"

I like this answer.

[martling.livejournal.com]

I think it also highlights different strategies of acquiring and maintaining expertise, i.e. which do you attempt to maximise:

- your relative expertise (e.g. by keeping your knowledge secret)

- your absolute expertise (e.g. by sharing/trading skills)

- the combined absolute or relative expertise of some particular group of people (e.g. by sharing/trading only among those people)

- the combined absolute expertise of the human race (e.g. by sharing as widely as possible)