I mentioned David Perell’s “Write of Passage” course a few days ago, and even if the course doesn’t interest you he’s a great guy to follow.
A few days ago, David tweeted this:
If you’re unable to read the embedded tweet, it says:
Writing is humbling because you realize that you don’t understand things you thought you were an expert on
I’ve found this to be true as well. Some of the topics I’ve written about on this blog are things that I thought I knew quite well, but as I started writing I realized I had more work to do.
It’s like I mentioned a few months ago, where I said that “I often intentionally present topics that I myself am unfamiliar with but curious about — which forces me to think through them, learn more, and put together a presentation“. I know that the act of writing will force me to think through things more deeply, and that’s a good thing.
And sometimes, like David said, it’ll make me realize that I’m not as sharp on some subjects as I thought I was.
Just try writing a book! You realize how little you know about a subject or topic but just how much you discover from the process. Good insight Mickey!
Great point! I’m sure that would do quite a lot.
You don’t have to know everything to still be an expert. Years back, Jim LaBarr and I were having a conversation about his use of Excel. Jim knows how to do more things with Excel than anyone else I’ve ever met. But we thought about what he knew vs. ALL the things in Excel and we concluded that he probably only “knew” about 5-10% of what Excel could do. But that still qualified him as an expert! There are some things so vast, that you don’t have to know a lot to be an expert.
Still, I like your idea. It’s like the old idea that if you want to learn something, teach it to someone else!
Great example! I agree that “expert” can be quite relative. I consider myself an “expert” in WordPress, but I also concede that there is a ton that I don’t know about it. Well said.