Becoming an expert

 What does it take to become an expert on something or to do something really excellently?

You need a pretty narrow field or a well defined something: goal keeping, making wooden chairs or Calvin's doctrine of Scripture. 

Of course intelligence (the right kind of intelligence for the job) and conscientiousness will be important. Depending on the task you may need openness and creativity. Some spark of natural ability would of course be a great start. 

Almost certainly you need lots of practice. And for that you will likely need a deep interest or commitment. You will need some kind of pay back or motivation. Why are you doing this thing and going on caring about how you are doing it? This thing ought to do something for you.  

But it is no good just to do the same thing again and again if the results are not improving. Make a million rubbish pipe racks and they will still be rubbish. You need critical reflection on your practice. You need to get better. A little bit better every so often over long period of time and you will soon be very good, much better than many others. 

Quite likely you need some outside help: a master who will train the apprentice, or a coach, or a PhD supervisor. 

And speaking of PhDs, that might give us an idea of the amount of time needed. You may well need an undergraduate degree and then a master's degree and then three years of full time work. After that, with any luck, you will have made an original and significant contribution to scholarship and written something that is in principle worthy of publication. You will be an expert. You may well know more about your thing or do your thing better than anyone else in the world. 

So with some background maybe you could do this in 6 years part time. Or in 10 years as a hobby.