We are just like experts, except different. There are two things experts know that we who are less expert haven’t learned.
First, experts know more. They have more knowledge. Their quantity of knowledge is much larger. They carry entire libraries of information in their heads. The volume is impressive. Music experts know many more songs, concertos, symphonies, melodies and rhythms. An art expert has an extensive mental library of paintings and sculptures. A psychology expert knows much more than the person taking AP Psychology. If you want to be an expert, learn more.
Second, experts have more specialized knowledge.
Most people know that real estate means land and anything permanently attached to it. They have a general understanding of contracts. Beginning realtors know what affixed, clauses and addendums mean. Expert realtors about contingencies, inspections, appraisals and title reports. As realtor, Rob Almberg says, expert realtors know the housing market neighborhood by neighborhood. They have every detailed and categorized knowledge.
Most people know the music has pitch, rhythm and harmony. Beginning musicians know about beats, choruses and lead sheets. Music experts know about coda, bridges, glissando, intermezzo, and Nashville notation. They understand minor thirds, perfect fifths and augmented sevenths. Their three Rs are riffs, ragas and refrains.
Most people know that painters use brushes, canvases, acrylics, oils and watercolors. Beginning artists know about strokes, aesthetics, backgrounds and perspective. Art experts know all-over space, bleeding, blending, cast, cutting-in, etching, floating, masstone and surrealism.
Most people know how to search the internet, how to click, and how to get what they want. Beginning bloggers know about posts, categories, tags and keywords. Novice bloggers know page views, that people like pictures, and how to include alt tags. Expert bloggers know those topics in more depth. They also know about sales funnels, SEO, heat maps, link backs, affiliates, autoresponders, lead magnets and landing pages. Expert bloggers have both more knowledge and more specialized knowledge.
Most people know psychology is the study of people. Psychology beginners know the difference between basic and applied research. They know there are theories of personality, learning, cognition and development. Psychology experts know about central tendency, regressions and multivariate analysis. They know Premack’s principle, Grandma’s law, Morgan’s cannon and schedules of reinforcement. They can distinguish between the Zeigarnik Effect, Pollyanna Effect and the Law of Effect. Beginning counselors look for what to say next; experts look for patterns.
As we become more expert, our specialized knowledge become internalized. We response more automatically, more naturally. The technical term is implicit memory. We go from knowing things in our head to doing them automatically. When you first learn to drive a car, everything distracts you. You have to talk yourself through your turns. There is a lot of thinking going on. But when you become an expert driver, you can drive smoothly even though the radio blares, your passengers chatter and your dog barks. Experts do thing more automatically, the result of long hours of practice.
Internalizing knowledge happens to all experts. Musician Rob Pottorf says: “Your music will only have soul once it stops coming from your head and speaks thru your heart.” And realtor Ron Almberg notes that expert realtors “live in the world of marketing, contracts and customer service.”
Nobel laureate, Konrad Lorenz is best known for his work on imprinting. Baby geese would follow him around because he was the first thing they saw. This very specialized research. He won the Nobel Prize for a very narrow field of research. Lorenz is attributed as saying: “Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.”
Becoming an expert is all about learning more about less. It is a narrowing process. My thesis was on how to measure values. More precisely it was title: “Pupilary reactivity to visual stimuli as a function of Allport’s intrinsic-extrinsic orientations.” My doctoral dissertation was even more specific. Its title was: “Processes underlying the solution of letter series and analogical reasoning tasks.” Only a few hundred people in the world understand those topics as well as I do. Of course, only a handful actually care.
Experts know more about a topic and know a specific subset of the topic in great depth.
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