If someone took 5 minutes to fix something for you, would you be prepared to pay them a premium for their help (because you needed their expertise) or would you more likely be surprised they were charging you so much for something that only took them 5 minutes?

A World of Instant Gratification

I’m fascinated at how much we can find out (and solve) quickly and for free these days.

Thanks to the huge capabilities of Google and other search engines and the internet we can find out almost anything in seconds. We can get answers in seconds to questions it would have previously taken us weeks to figure out.

That’s not even getting into the realms of some of the wonderful things that advances in AI (which you can learn from something as simple as the GPT AI chat) can tell us.

But there are some things that Google or even the most advanced AI can’t tell us.

That’s when we need experts.

Hard Earned Expertise – a Dying Art?

In today’s world experts are often criticised or undervalued. People expect quick easy answers and equate how much time spends on something to how much that is worth. They value quantity over quality and the value of expertise is lost along the way due to people being so used to instant gratification and getting a lot of answers quickly and easily.

I wonder in the future if (due to the nature of the times we live in) our experts will be less so, if we’ll accept less and if people will be less prepared to build up years and years and years of expertise due to that expertise being more and more undervalued.

I read this story today:

A giant ship’s engine broke down and no one could repair it, so they took it to a Mechanical Engineer with over 40 years of experience.

 

He inspected the engine very carefully, from top to bottom. After seeing everything, the engineer unloaded the bag and pulled out a small hammer.

 

He knocked something gently. Soon, the engine came to life again. The engine has been fixed!

 

7 days later the engineer mentioned that the total cost of repairing the giant ship was $ 10,000 to the ship owner

 

“What ?!” said the owner.

 

“You did almost nothing. Give us a detailed bill.”

 

The answer is simple:

 

Tap with a hammer: $ 2

 

Know where to knock & how much to knock: $ 9,998

 

Lessons to Learn

 

The importance of appreciating one’s expertise and experience … Until

 

The words “it’s easy” and “that’s all”, should be set aside. Why? Because maybe the experience is the result of struggles, experiments and even tears.

 

If i do a job in 30 minutes it’s because i spent 10 years learning how to do that in 30 minutes. You owe me for the years, not the minutes.

 

This sentence reminds me of someone’s advice on respecting and wisely respecting the work of others.

 

There I also learned to see people …

 

When they do not respect others, at the same time he has humbled himself.

 

Expertise and experience, that’s expensive.

At least it makes you think, doesn’t it?

I also recently saw a quote from the Dalai Lama which I think offers a similar kind of reflection on how the things we value are shifting in today’s fast paced, easy answer world:

We have bigger houses but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time;
We have more degrees, but less sense;
more knowledge, but less judgment;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicines, but less healthiness;

 

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbour.
We’ve built more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communications;
We have become long on quantity, but short on quality.
These times are times of fast foods; but slow digestion;
Tall man but short character;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.

 

It is time when there is much in the window, but nothing in the room.”

 

– Dalai Lama XIV

Deep. I know. That’s the Dalai Lama for you. Food for thought though…