The Value of Inexperience

Must writers be readers? 

Must inventors be engineers?

Must music critics be musicians? 

Must coaches be former athletes? 

Dr. Anders Ericsson believes it takes 10000 hours of practice to become an expert in a field. And that may be true - traditionally. 

Inventors that engineer can materialize and master their vision without the difficulty of explaining it. Coaches that are former athletes are naturally the most seasoned. Most renowned authors are prolific readers. But your own experience may also narrow your perspective. A musician chooses their genre based on narrow influences that they will forever hold dear. An inventor that has no engineering experience has NO conception of what may be considered technically impossible to build: their imagination is boundless and not limited to the extent of their technical prowess. It’s outsider oversight that often causes the most disrupting paradigm shifts in an art, sport or industry. 

You can watch a thousand movies and not have a clue how to write a screenplay or direct a multi-camera sequence. You could read every literary classic and know all the characters and stories ever told; it would make you worse off as an author because you would probably draw from the ideas of other writers and not your own. You can study for a decade and master computer engineering, but you may never be able to see “bleeding neck” problems and postulate effective solutions. 

Robert Christigau is perhaps the most notorious music critic of all time, yet he’s never been a musician. Roger Ebert, a Pulitzer-winning film critic, is an enthusiastic observer of the industry who writes to celebrate art and entertainment, not to control it or make unfounded idealistic arguments for artistic integrity. Billy Beane, current GM of the Oakland Athletics and the subject of Moneyball, caused a massive disruption in the way Major League Baseball teams are managed; yet that was only because he completely disregarded his former major league experience as well as the substantial experience of many of his colleagues. 

Remaining critical of the effect of your experience in a field on your perspective of that field is key, and that’s why having no experience can sometimes be advantageous. Bringing hubris from past successes to present decisions is irrational; experiences with failure are far more important than with success, because success is an unrepeatable transcendental anomaly of money, timing, luck, image and connections. In contrast, failure is always definable, quantifiable, and repeatable.

Readers must be writers. 

Engineers must be inventors. 

Musicians must be music critics. 

Athletes must be coaches. 

On the other hand, the opposites are true. Readers must be writers because otherwise their reading is worth nothing more than entertainment. Good musicians must be music critics: they must learn to reject the rigid structures of radio pop and interpret nearly 150 years of recorded music. Athletes must act like coaches to motivate their teammates and exact game-winning team unity. Engineers must be inventors because wherever they work, whether they work with a team or independently, ingenuity is a prerequisite. 

What is something that interests you most with which you have the least experience?