How to become an expert in your field
A couple of years ago, when I started to do business online, I had a mind frame in which I believed that I didn't know anything well enough to make a product out of it. At the time, I was looking to create a digital product to sell. I was doing a lot of research and brainstorming and also watched a lot of videos to try to come up with something that I could transform into a product.
I have to admit that I don't remember the video author and title anymore but there was this one video that really changed my mindset. I would like to share the knowledge that I got from this video because it can help you on your journey as well.
Become more knowledgeable than 90% of the general population
The message of this video was very simple, you don't need to be an expert to be able to teach people what you know. If you read a book on a topic or watch 2-3 long form documentary videos on it, you will automatically know more than 90 to 95% of the general population about this topic.
If you combine the reading with the watching of long form videos, you will climb even higher in this percentage and after a while you will rate just a bit lower than the people who are the experts in the field.
You don't need to be an expert to be a teacher
When I look at the German teachers of my kids, I would say that they speak much worse the language than myself. I'm a native German speaker but my kids go to the french school. Since these teachers also teach other subjects, they are not real experts in the German language but still, they teach it even though they are not speaking the language perfectly.
This is just to illustrate that we shouldn't worry about not being an expert before we can teach a topic that we have researched.
The 'Matthew Effect' in education
This principle suggest that the rich get richer in terms of knowledge. People who are already well-informed are more likely to learn more information and increasing their knowledge base. By reading a book, or watching videos on the topic, you start this effect which will lead to even greater knowledge acquisition over time. The more you know, the better you will understand the additional knowledge that you pick up. The more you work on a topic and learn about it the more expert you will become.
In a world where our attention span is getting shorter and shorter and where people read less and less, you can become a specialist in a field when you decide to. You just need to put in the effort to read a couple of books and watch documentaries. Once you have done this work, you know that you will have a better knowledge in this field than 90% of the population and therefore, you have the potential to teach something to a very big number of people!
The next step is then to go on improving your knowledge and start to find a way to teach it to people through videos, books, e-books, posts, articles and become little by little an expert in your field!
With @ph1102, I'm running the @liotes project.
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Thank you for sharing this insight! The idea that we don't need to be "experts" to start teaching really changed my perspective. The way you explained the Matthew Effect and how simple consistent learning can set us apart is truly motivating.
Appreciate the practical encouragement... time to keep reading and sharing! 🙌
That's true, you don't need to be an expert to teach something. But, successful teachings requires some other skills ...
Definitely! I think the competition is overrated, especially in our minds. We only need to understand the basics and be on our way to teaching that, everything else will fall into place over time as we now have experience of teaching (practical knowledge) and being open to learning more about what we're teaching. Like a positive feedback loop develops from there :)
With AI, we're all experts now. Although I know less and less every day.
It's just like that, if we try to understand things enough and give it time, one day we will definitely succeed in our field. If we take pressure, we will never be able to understand things.