Experience is not a great teacher. As the old wisdom says, "There's a difference between 10 years of experience and the same experience for 10 years." Sometimes, skill matches experience. Many times it doesn't.
I wrote recently about the power of observation to accelerate your learning. Observe what experience produces. People with lots of experience are often no better than average. People with little experience are often exceptional.
- Are teachers with 15 years of experience noticeably better in year 15 than in year five? What about sports coaches?
- Does marriage steadily improve as couples gain more experience being married to each other?
- Has your experience resulted in better eating decisions? Political views? Health choices?
The message is not that more experience leads to average. Experience is not a negative, but it's not automatically a positive, either. It's neutral. To make experience a positive requires that you use it well. Capitalize on it. Learn from it. Improve it.
Experience won't do your learning for you. It will put you in a spin cycle of the same patterns if you allow it.
10 years from today, you will have 10 more years of experience, and so will everyone else. The difference will be our particular experiences, what we learn from them, and how we use those lessons.
Brick by brick. Do the work.
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