We encounter this all the time, where an idea or opportunity is thrown out by someone and people buy into it at different degrees. It could be anything from a financial investment, social event, personal life recommendation, career opportunity, etc. Whether or not it is a good or bad idea depends upon the unique circumstance, but I’d like to explore an overall trend of how expertise typically changes the way people buy into ideas and opportunities both logically and emotionally.

Pros Like Technicals

I’ve observed a consistent pattern in people, including personally with myself, that, as one’s expertise increases in any subject matter, they primarily utilize technical qualifications of ideas and opportunities. This is typical human nature, since one with professional grade expertise in anything would naturally utilize the technical understanding of their expertise to make a better personal judgment of the proposed idea or opportunity. This is so, since the expert individual would have belief in the relative effectiveness expertise and consciously or most often subconsciously sense an opportunity to avoid pain or gain pleasure from the proposed opportunity. Also, the pro likely has already more so integrated this technical qualification approach as a habit and has more so linked the logic & emotion of a good idea or opportunity related to their expertise to their beliefs within their technical qualification framework. For the purpose of this concept, a pro doesn’t even have to hold accurate or effective knowledge, as they may simply be experts within their own false framework of beliefs, where, here, expert is simply a greater degree of precision in one’s distinctions.

Rookies Buy Much More Into Vision

The less expertise that one holds in a matter of life, the less they will qualify ideas and opportunities on a basis of technical variables. Instead, rookies buy much more into ideas and opportunities based much more on the general vision of what is proposed. Often this vision may be a blending of a formally pitched vision and an internally derived vision by the rookie, based on much more vague assumptions than a pro would likely make. As a result of this premise, rookies will buy into a lot more ideas and opportunities than pros, overall. We all know this is true even in general life with children versus adults, due to this same principle.

My Personal Example

A couple things that I’ve spent a lot of time seeking deep understanding of in my life so far are Wealth Building and human motivation. Now, you have to understand that, since I am known for my role as a professional entrepreneur, that I get A LOT of business and investment ideas and opportunities pitched to me on a continuous basis. Naturally, almost everyone who pitches or refers an idea or opportunity like this to me believes it is a good one for me. Several years ago, I probably would have been interested in 80% or more of them. However, now, primarily based on my long developed technical expertise of wealth building and human motivation, I am not even interested in about 95% of them. The quality of ideas and opportunities didn’t change. The key difference was that I developed myself from a rookie into a pro and stopped buying into a general vision of these and started rigorously qualifying them based on technical variables. Also, while there may be less instances of passion and positive emotion around the subject matter for me, I still can get ecstatic over great business and investment ideas and opportunities, and the frequency of positive emotion can be increased with a greater supply of my current qualified demands. Same thing goes for many other things in life, such as personal friendship connections.

Pros Have Better Averages Overall

I would say that it is true that pros do have better averages of success than rookies, overall, when it comes to buying into what they believe to be good ideas or opportunities in life. This is logical in that one is typically more effectively knowledgeable and skilled in a matter when they reach a level of pro in their precision of distinction. That effectiveness is going to translate into real world successful outcomes, more often than for rookies who lack that same effectiveness in their knowledge and skill. However, it is important to note that this is the overall case. Each individual instance is unique and any rookie can be much more capable and successful than any pro.

We Are All Rookies & Pros

So what are you, a rookie or a pro? The truth is that virtually all of us are both rookies and pros. One reason for this is that it depends on what matter of life is in question. For example, I may be a pro at business strategy and a rookie at public speaking, where you might be a pro at public speaking and a rookie at business strategy. Another reason why virtually all of us are both is that the rating of rookie and pro are relative, where someone may be considered a pro compared to one person but a rookie compared to another person. With a broad enough definition of subject matter, which most are in the real world, then there can be an almost infinite spectrum of expertise to develop. This means that it is impractical, for real life purposes, to define absolute rookies and pros. For example, I am a computer technology pro compared to the average person, but a complete rookie compared to world class computer engineers.

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The overall pattern observation here is that, with greater expertise in people, typically comes a bias towards technical qualification of ideas and opportunities relating to one’s expertise. And the less expertise one holds with a subject matter, the more they are likely to qualify ideas and opportunities based on a general vision in their mind, that they personally develop and/or acquire from others. This pattern applies to all types of matters in life and even applies to people who use their personal intuition as opposed to more logical analysis.

So tell me… What are you a rookie or pro at in life?