Giving up on being an expert

I remember that when I was younger, I would spend endless hours editing videos at home. Trying to create whatever came to my mind and just having fun. I loved doing it. And I think that at some point, my videos were no longer that terrible and I wanted to focus more on media production.

But at least three years ago, I started to be less conscious about my production decisions because I relied on my background on becoming, what I called back then, an expert.

I would just stop trying to make the videos better but to make my current workflow just faster. That was the best way to measure my improvement over time but soon I’ve discovered that that was a terrible approach.

In 2018, I worked on my thesis to build a Personal Knowledge Management platform with Open Source technologies. It was really cool and I loved the process a lot!

But someday, while reviewing some books I came across what is called “the expert syndrome”. This is basically the idea that when you label yourself an expert at any given topic, you are less likely to continue making improvements in what you know, what you can do, and so on. Because an expert doesn’t need to get better but to just keep their level.

I first I thought that it wasn’t a big deal. That I would just work on my things and there wouldn’t be much difference in my direction of being good at making videos.

But then, my process was really optimized and I couldn’t find anymore what to do with such skills. I had convinced myself that I was an expert and there was nothing else that could be improved.

So after some months when I was about to finish my thesis work, it all made sense. I was just so confident that my skills were top-notch that I had forgotten that there is always room for improvement. And there was so much I still had to learn that there was no reason to stop learning at any age in the end.

So with this new knowledge, I gave up with the idea that I am an expert. I don’t believe that I will ever be an expert at anything. Probably knowledgeable or experienced but not an expert.

Because I know that I want to make my work better every single day. And I made of that my daily mantra to work, create, and live.