Build Rapid Expertise by Peter Hollins

Author:Peter Hollins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublishDrive
Published: 2020-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

Become the Minimum Viable Expert (MVE)

Exemplars take different paths to get to their level, but there’s a good chance a lot of the tools and elements experts in a certain field have used are similar among them all. A room full of master chefs might specialize in different cuisines and styles—but at some point in their learning, they all depended on the same measuring cups, knife skills, and heat sources. They all went different directions from there, but once they were all at that same basic point where they needed to master certain skills that would set them apart from their peers. At what point could they have felt or defined themselves as experts? Earlier, if they were intentional about it.

Finding out the base measure of the knowledge you need for expertise helps you construct an overall view of the field you’re pursuing mastery in. You’ll get a better feel for the landscape of the subject and what’s most important about it, which will help you speed up your learning process. This is what we can call the minimum viable level of expertise. It’s meant to signify that sometimes, you don’t need as much knowledge or skill as you think to be an expert—and in fact, if you zero in on what really moves the needle in terms of expertise, then you might just be able to sneak into expert status on the basis of a strategic collection of skills, or deep knowledge in a particular domain.

What do the top experts in your field know? What really sets them apart from others? If you tried, you could probably break it down into a handful of aspects that, when combined, create someone to be reckoned with. That’s what your aim is—to find the minimum amount of important elements, focus on what matters, and get up to speed fast.

How much do you need to know? Perhaps not as much as you think if you are strategic about it. Many people feel that expertise is a deep and thorough understanding of everything in a certain field. That’s an impossibility, of course. Instead, define expertise as knowing enough to know where to look to solve a problem or give an educated answer to a question, which is far more applicable to the real world.

In becoming the minimum viable expert, let’s use the example of the financial field. When considering the field, chances are a few known experts in that discipline will come to your mind.

For example, in thinking about who drives thought in the financial world, Warren Buffett immediately springs to my mind. Janet Yellen comes next. Mulling it over some more, Michael Bloomberg, Larry Fink, and Ray Dalio come up.

Imagine what you could do if you had the sum knowledge of all five of those figures. That may sound outlandish—and frankly, it is. But if you were to spend just a few hours in a room where all five of them were talking shop, chances are you’d pick up a lot.

Motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously claimed, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

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