A few months ago, I signed a client that was in the business of manufacturing premium carpets. It was a century-old family business that started with a very small weaving community in Mirzapur, India.

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Over the years, they expanded their operations, and now they are the biggest manufacturer of handcrafted carpets in the country.

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Naturally, with this level of output, I expected them to operate with huge manufacturing units engineered with a seamless supply chain workflow. But surprisingly, they still work with the same community.

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The only difference?

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The community is now almost thirty times bigger.

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My job as a brand storyteller was to tell the story of their growth from a dozen unorganized weavers to a workforce of over 400 weavers, all working from their homes and somehow being more efficient than factories. But, there was a problem. I couldn’t tell their story unless I had a thorough understanding of their day-to-day operations.

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So I decided to visit their township for a weekend.

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As soon as I entered, I realized that everyone here knew each other intimately. Even in casual conversations, there was a sense of familiarity. At first, I attributed it to rural cultural bonding, but it was later revealed to me that almost everyone was related to each other. Turns out, the entire township grew in size with the same families that started the business.

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Over the years, the affluence of every family grew steadily. But the true inheritance of every generation remained the same; the craft of weaving carpets. Every child upwards of age 10 got professional training from their parents after their schools dispersed. They put in at least 5–7 hours daily to learn the craft and by the time they turn 18, they are already an expert ready for employment.

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Now I was just there to write an inspirational story around this peerless nepotistic growth. But, what I contrived was much more pronounced.

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Through the stories of all the weavers, I accidentally decoded the process of becoming an expert.

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And yes, it’s more than just putting in 10,000 hours.

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The first thing I noticed was that these kids were trained in an extremely supervised environment. Despite a home school approach, their lessons followed a rigorous curriculum with non-negotiable timetables. Unlike modern educational systems that promote independent thinking, these kids were taught not to think; just to follow instructions.

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To say that their lessons were intense would be an understatement. These kids were micro-managed over every tiny detail and most importantly they were given instant and comprehensive feedback. Now if you’re thinking “Woah isn’t that kind of restrictive?” then here’s their response.

“Creativity can only follow proficiency, not precede it. A true creative pushes the envelope of expectations. But in order to push the envelop you need to know the fundamentals better than everyone.”

However, isn’t this true for every skill?

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If you’re a boxing fan you’d probably know the infamous shoulder roll of Floyd Mayweather.

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A few months ago, I tried to slip a jab with a shoulder roll in a sparring session. The next thing I knew, I was knocked down with a right hook.

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Why did this happen to me but never to Mayweather?

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Because you can’t come up with such moves unless you already know every single combination that your opponent can attack you with. And this knowledge comes with experience. Experience in learning the fundamentals under personalized guidance.

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So here’s my first observation for becoming an expert:

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Put the reps in!

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And more importantly, put them in an ecosystem that provides constant and personalized feedback so that you don’t repeat fundamental mistakes.

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On my second day, I went to observe the lessons of more advanced students. In a split second, I witnessed the fruits of their years of efforts reap in. After 5 years of learning the fundamentals, I could see true masters at work. The hands of these 15–16-year-old kids moved in perfect harmony with each other. From my untrained vantage point, the machines seemed a natural extension of their body; hands and threads merging into a single entity creating a beautiful tapestry right in front of my eyes. Their level of expertise felt almost unnatural.

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How can someone consciously take deliberate actions with such swiftness?

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In fact, if you think about it, whenever we see a true expert at work, it’s always unfathomable. Watching people solve a Rubik’s cube in less than 10 seconds or save a penalty with split-second reaction time is eerily close to witnessing magic.

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But, as a kid, I used to feel the same way about people who could drive flawlessly. Now as an adult, after thousands of miles, I can drive without any conscious thought as well.

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So maybe this gives us a peak behind the curtain. It’s clear that repeating a task pushes us towards excellence.

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But the question remains, HOW?

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Upon investigation, I understood that the human brain has an evolutionary trait of recognizing patterns. Whenever we repeat tasks our brain picks up patterns and eventually instead of leveraging System 2 thinking of conscious effort, we start to leverage System 1 thinking of automatic action.

System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.

System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.

-Daniel Kahneman

After repeating a task multiple times, we don’t think. We just do!

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Naturally, this is only applicable to skills that have patterns for our brains to recognize. And this brings me to my second observation to become an expert:

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You can only become an expert in a skill that has patterns for your brain to learn.

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For example, if you play Snake and Ladders for 10,000 hours, you still won’t be better off than the person playing it for the first time. This is because there are no consistent patterns for your brain to comprehend.

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On my final day, I spoke with a gentleman who leads all the weavers. There was a question that I was itching to ask him.

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“How do you innovate if all you do is train your students to be efficient”

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“We don’t teach innovators. Innovators teach themselves” he said.

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You can pick up any skill. You’d find that there are millions of experts but only a handful of true innovators. Millions of pianists can play Beethoven’s Symphony flawlessly. But only a handful can create original music as iconic as Beethoven’s Symphony.

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The ONLY difference between the two is that the latter never stops learning. They keep going back to the drawing board, question the fundamentals they mastered, and push the envelope beyond expectations.

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Or in other words, my third and final observation for becoming an expert is:

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Don’t hit a plateau.

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You might have learned a skill to perfection, but there is always scope to break the glass ceilings. So keep at it!

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Experiencing 400 experts working in sync with each other made me understand that the advantage of natural talent pales in front of structured learning. True experts are not born, they are made. So the only question in your quest for excellence that needs to be answered is “How far do YOU want to go?”