Experience

Do we seek the best driving advice from a 60-year-old who has been driving for 40 years?
Or from an F1 champion who has won multiple championships?
Or from a driving instructor who has spent 10 years deliberately helping others improve?

Casual experience — simply racking up decades behind the wheel — doesn’t mean much.
Even expert performance, by itself, doesn’t automatically translate into wisdom worth following.
What truly counts is instructional experience: the refined ability to diagnose errors, break down tacit knowledge, and guide others through deliberate practice.

Most of what a long-time driver “knows” is tacit — intuitive, embodied, and hard to articulate (as Michael Polanyi described). An F1 champion has elite pattern recognition and deliberate practice under pressure, but that doesn’t guarantee they can unpack their skill for a beginner. The instructor who has spent years reflecting on how people actually learn, adjusting their methods, and producing measurable improvement in students — that is the person whose experience is structured to transfer.

Quantity of experience is not the same as quality. Unexamined repetition can even lock in bad habits. Real teaching skill comes from deliberate reflection and the meta-ability to help others move up the skill ladder.

So next time someone says “I’ve been doing this for decades.”
Ask: “How many people have you actually helped get significantly better?”