VOL. 4 | AUGUST 9, 2024

Welcome to The Viewfinder — a weekly invitation to reframe perspective, explore different angles, and live in wonder.

This week, we’re debunking the myth of expertise and channeling our inner smart rookie. Keep scrolling for more on what’s on our bookshelves and on our minds.

THE PARADOX: Expert & Rookie

INITIAL WONDER: How has increased accessibility to information shifted the role of the expert?

As an all-you-can-eat buffet of shared experiences, advice, data, and truths, the Internet ushered in the Information Age and catalyzed the “democratization of expertise”. Facts are now literally at our fingertips: AI-supported search bars generate answers within seconds, and clicks and scrolls surface immediate solutions. With people now readily able to gather, consume, and regurgitate information, it would be easy to claim expertise, discrediting those who earned that once-rarified position. A return to the word’s origin (expertus — to try), however, reminds us that experimentation and risk-taking, and by extension failure, are fundamental to acquiring expertise.

CRITICAL INSIGHT: The greatest minds don't always have all the right answers, but they do ask all the right questions.

ACTIONABLE WISDOM: If expertise is more about striving than specializing, embrace curiosity and your inner rookie to challenge convention, pierce complacency, and push past current contours and boundaries.

Grappling with a vexing problem? Noticing a paradox emerging in culture that you want us to explore?

We’d love to hear from you!

Three fascinating reads on the subject of embracing a beginner’s mindset and letting curiosity lead the way:

1. In a society that puts precocious geniuses and young achievers on a pedestal, there’s immeasurable value in being a late bloomer. “We have a notion that the happiest people are those who have aimed their life toward some goal and then attained it, like winning a championship trophy or achieving renown. But the best moments of life can be found within the lifelong learning or quest itself.”
   

2. Call Austin Kleon an expert and he’ll correct you. Call him a guru and, well, he might throw up on you. “When I write, when I publish, when I speak,” he says, “It is in the spirit of being a fellow student. I am simply sharing the things that I am learning.” To Kleon, becoming an expert is a kind of spiritual death or creative petrification. After all, the more time you spend giving people answers, the less time you spend asking questions.
   

3. In this lovely essay on learning how to play chess side by side with his daughter, Vanderbilt writes about being an “adult beginner”, going beyond what we already know ourselves to be good at, and diving into something new. Learning isn’t just for the young.
   

Want to know how wonder fuels and informs our research and strategy work?

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Elmo, the great thing about specializing in something is you get to decide. I think you’ll be a great specialist in anything you end up choosing!”
— US Olympic gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik’s reply to Elmo on X, after the Sesame Street character asked him for advice on being a specialist

4 NEW BOOKS WE STARTED THIS WEEK
+ A Gentleman In Moscow, Amor Towles
+ The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks
+ The Ministry Of Time, Kaliane Bradley
+ Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs Of Mary Rodgers, Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green

3 NEW SKILLS WE’RE LEARNING
+ Spanish on Duolingo
+ Bookbinding
+ Google Analytics

2 NEW INGREDIENTS WE WANT TO TRY COOKING WITH
+ Rhubarb
+ Quinoa

1 PODCAST EPISODE TO LISTEN TO
+ Rookies Make The Most Interesting Choices, from our very own Smart Rookie podcast