Wouldn’t you like to be an expert? To intuitively know the right answers? Enter the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, which shines a light on how we develop and master skills, helping us understand how we progress from novice to expert, including all the steps in between.
Experts are Not Just Supercharged Novices
There’s much more to mastering a skill than just acquiring more knowledge. Just like adults are not simply bigger children, experts are not only smarter, more knowledgeable or faster than novices. The differences can be found at a more fundamental level, such as in how they perceive the world and approach problems.
Let’s take a familiar example: cooking. The novice cook needs detailed recipes to prepare even the simplest of dishes; the expert chef doesn’t need explicit recipes at all. It’s not that the chef memorized all the recipes. In fact, if he needs to make an unexpected change in how a dish is prepared — even one that was never made before — he can intuitively pull it off. Experienced folks seem to ‘just know’, don’t they?
To understand how that works, let’s turn to the ideas developed by brothers Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus in the early 80s, the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. Their model breaks down the journey to mastery in five discrete stages, outlining what’s necessary to improve at each of them. Let’s see.
The 5 Skill Levels
1. Novices
The main goal of novices is to accomplish immediate tasks. Since they have little or no previous experience, they’re usually insecure and are focused only on having their first successes. Novices need clear rules and unambiguous instructions, and to concentrate on following them strictly. As such, they commonly don’t feel responsible for anything other than correctly following what was passed to them (“I’m just following orders!”).
To improve, novices usually need close monitoring to bring their actions as close as possible to achieve what is expected by adhering to the rules.
2. Advanced Beginners
Advanced beginners still operate following rules, but they’re able to apply them not only on the exact situations that they were intended for, but also on similar contexts. The once-rigid rules become more like guidelines. Advanced beginners try new things out, but still have difficulty troubleshooting problems. Just like novices, they’re still focused on completing tasks — they don’t want lengthy theorizing and don’t have much interest in the big picture.
To improve, advanced beginners need to gain experience dealing with real situations, preferably in limited and controlled situations (with much of the ‘real-world complexity’ filtered out).
3. Competent
As the rules and guidelines become prohibitively complex, practitioners begin organizing and sorting them by relevance, forming conceptual models. Competent practitioners can troubleshoot problems, and will work based on deliberate planning and past experience. They are willing to make decisions and to accept responsibility for their outcomes.
To improve, competent practitioners need exposure to a wide variety of typical, real-world, ‘whole’ situations. By dealing with those, they better grasp the connections between the isolated conceptual models they already use.
4. Proficient
Proficient practitioners create not only conceptual models, but a conceptual framework around their whole skill. They want the big picture, and become frustrated with oversimplified information. They’re conscious of their performance and can adjust their behaviors accordingly. They can also use and adapt others’ experiences, as well as grasp and apply maxims — which require much more sophisticated interpretation than mere rules or guidelines (as they’re much more generic and context-dependent).
To advance to the fifth and last level, proficient practitioners need even more practice — lots of it. And, as much as possible, they should practice without being hindered by policies or guidelines. The intuition of the expert starts with a vast pool of practical knowledge, and that can only be developed by experimenting freely.
5. Experts
The hallmark of experts is intuition: they just do what works — no explicit analysis or planning is involved. While proficient practitioners can intuitively identify problems, experts can go and intuitively solve them. They tap into their vast pool of knowledge and effortlessly identify patterns, applying solutions in context. Although experts are amazingly intuitive, they are usually rather inarticulate in explaining how they arrived at a conclusion.
Although technically this is the last stage in the model, experts never cease to practice and evolve in subtle ways, incorporating rarer and exceptional cases in their knowledge pool.
Common Themes: What Are the Fundamental Changes?
By looking at the five levels from a higher altitude, we can distill some common themes that emerge as one progresses from novice to expert:
- Moving away from relying on rules and explicit knowledge to intuition and pattern matching.
- Better filtering, where problems are no longer a big collection of data but a complete and unique whole where some bits are much more relevant than others.
- Moving from being a detached observer of the problem to an involved part of the system itself, accepting responsibility for results, not just for carrying out tasks.
Lessons from the Dreyfus Model
How can we use the Dreyfus model in everyday life? Find below some key takeaways and ideas that speak most loudly to me. (I’m sure there are many others — feel free to contribute in the comments!)
- Make skills acquisition as productive as possible. This is true both for individuals as well as for teams. By having a better idea of your skill level, you’re able to give yourself (or others in your team) exactly what’s needed at that particular level. If you want novices to operate at their best, they will need unambiguous rules. On the other hand, bothering the experts with intricate rules and policies is a recipe for frustration and bringing their performance down. We want to avoid ‘racing sheep and herding horses’.
- Use it as a standard guidance and assessment framework. The Dreyfus model gives us a no-nonsense way to assess and compare skill levels in many contexts. We could use it to design better learning materials and courses, or salary ladders based strictly on skill level. Granted, the model is not 100% objective, but it’s much better than many ‘fluffy’ assessment tools I’ve seen around.
- Pair up mentors and apprentices effectively. I’ve seen a big misconception many times, which is that the better you are at a skill the better mentor you’ll be. Not at all! In fact, experts can be the worst possible mentors, as they may lack the language (not to mention the patience) to deal with novices. It’s usually better to pair up people who are not more than two levels apart. That way, the mentor has significantly more experience than the apprentice, and can also hark back to the time he was an apprentice himself.
A Book Recommendation
Most of the ideas in this article were taken from the book Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, which is my new all-time-favorite ‘how-to-use-your-brain’ kind of book.
If you’re interested in more details on the Dreyfus model, as well as many techniques and practical concepts for brain development, I highly recommend you to grab a copy. (Note: The book is marketed for software developers, but I found it’s highly readable and useful for ‘normal people’ as well) 
As an “abnormal” software developer, I may have to check that out
The pattern shown is from rational to intuitive, from discursive to “big picture” illuminations. Fair enough. What is still missed is emphasize on transition from “sum of parts” understanding to organic integration, based on human aspect, I believe. In other words, change of shift from “what” and “how” to “why” and “who”.
That’s a very interesting observation, Sergii. As we move from novice to expert, there’s a tendency to abandon the analytical, reductionist view and focus more on the ’softer’, holistic aspects of any given skill.
Your comment made me think that, indeed, gaining more perspective about a skill does lead to thinking more about the ‘who’ of it. That happens because, ultimately, all skills and professions are made to please people (either yourself or clients), isn’t it?
Thanks for the insight!
The stages remind me of the guild system that was used in the Middle Ages in Europe. There, the Master was an owner of a small business, who trained Apprentices. Journeymen were skilled apprentices, that worked with the master until they were able to set up their own business.
This brings me to my question:
Is there a general time frame mentioned in the book? I believe that it takes about 10,000 hours to become an expert in any field.
The book does mention a number: 10 years of practice. It also mentions that it should not any kind of practice, but that it must be deliberate practice.
I usually take these numbers — such as 10 years, or 10,000 hours — with a grain of salt, here’s why: skills (and fields) immensely differ in scope size. As an extreme example, I just can’t put ‘pilot an aircraft’ and ‘clip nails’ in the same bucket. That’s why I chose not to include such number in the article — not even as rough guidelines.
Good article, Luciano. This is an interesting model of expertise, and I generally agree with what it says. I don’t think it’s so easy to catogorise real skill sets, but then these sort of paradigms are meant to be simplifications for the sake of clarity.
So I guess this means what I’m actually feeling on my more frustrating days is that I’m an advanced beginner at all trades and proficient at none?
Yes, just as every other model, this one also simplifies things a bit. And, as every other model, the point of it is not being right, but being useful.
Regarding skill distribution, you’re also right: ‘advanced beginner’ is the stage most people get stuck at. (I, like you, am an advanced beginner at many, many things).
Embrace it, there are no reasons for frustration…
I love the way you broke this down Luciano. This path is something we have all experienced, but most have never analyzed. I find the progressive steps very helpful for identifying where I am at present in various personal pursuits. How far we go through this process in any particular endeavor will, of course, depend on our levels of interest and passion. This was an exceptional article.
“I usually take these numbers — such as 10 years, or 10,000 hours — with a grain of salt, here’s why: skills (and fields) immensely differ in scope size. As an extreme example, I just can’t put ‘pilot an aircraft’ and ‘clip nails’ in the same bucket. That’s why I chose not to include such number in the article — not even as rough guidelines.”
I completely agree. The 10,000-hour figure has always seemed fairly arbitrary. It would be an interesting research project to classify the average number of hours needed to acquire a skill in a given domain at each of Dreyfus’ skill levels.
This was an excellent breakdown of learning stages. Dreyfus has always been an insightful thinker. What Computers Still Can’t Do is one of my favorite books.
It’s an honor to have you here, Andre. I discovered your site not long ago, and it has already become my #1 favorite blog on productivity and GTD.
Thanks for the recommendation! The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition is my first contact with Dreyfus’ work, and I’m excited to read more from him. For reference, I found out that the model is described in one of his other many books, Mind over Machine.
As always, great post Luciano. Your blog is inspiring. I’m not so sure there is a formula to becoming an expert as it states in “Outliers.” But 10k hours can’t help your quest to becoming the best you can be
Share the same hobby here – “the quest of brain power”, check out Peter Senge’s book.
The 5th Discipline.
One of my mentors always says “Go Use This Stuff!” and it really is one of the keys. In a way, an expert is someone who has actually made the mistakes that a beginner doesn’t want to make. Then, they’re able to live and tell about it plus give a roadmap about how to avoid it.
So many people don’t realize they’re an expert at something because they might be totally unconscious of what they’re doing. That’s why when someone asks me what their niche would be, I ask them to tell me the area where they have made the most mistakes in. That’s often one of those Aha! moments for them.
That’s a terrific approach, Jeffrey! Most people — myself included — tend to believe exactly the opposite (that you’re expert on areas that you didn’t make many mistakes on), so I can definitely see how that statement can be an eye-opener to many.
Thanks for sharing!
i’ve read many articles and books about human mind. So i’m found out a dreyfus theory, a 10000 hours rule, mind map, memorize technique and many others. when i’m read the theories all seems to be true, so i think there’s really many approaching technique to treat our way of thinking.
But when i’m trying to implement the theories that’s become a really difficult. the theories tend to simplify the fact (or i can’t to correlate the fact and the theory), because the reality is more complex, so i was just follow my intuition..mmm “she’s not skilled enough”, mmm “she’s the one i was looking for”, even i can’t really explain why with the words.
when come to quantifying knowledge in general i’m just differentiate to, “not knowing”, “knowing”, “understanding”, “proficient”, “expert”, above this level i was call a “genious”, a very rare of species
.
btw, i like this kind of blog, exploring our mind. in our unconscious mind this will keep on memory and build slowly our intuition if we connecting with our experience. a theory just make us to knowing, but practice will make us to understanding.
keep thinking, keep learning, and keep doing…nice blog
When I started to analyze how to better manage my team of consultants, I end up with 2 major concluzions:
- knowledge management
- competence mapping (for company and people)
For the first topic I would recommend you to read
http://www.systems-thinking.org/kmgmt/kmgmt.htm
as for the second topic
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-i.....apping.htm
The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition highlighted here by Luciano was for me a very practical approach in dealing in the real life with the combination of the competence and knowledge management.
Thanks for the pointers, Marcel!
I am always amazed about how many companies waste lots of money on complicated HR information systems, and how few of them use simple yet effective models like Dreyfus’s.
I like how this isn’t specific to any particular activity to become ‘expert’ at, and that you’ve highlighted the fact that it will take different lengths of time to become an expert at different things