# Twelve years of experience, or the same year twelve times
The craft · diagnostic · https://build-here.africa/book/chapters/02-03-twelve-years-of-experience-or-the-same-year-twelve-times.html

## The symptom

You know your job well. You would like to get better at one thing, but piling up the same situations no longer helps.

## The signal

> "Which precise move would I like to master better, and how could I practise it differently?"

## What's going on

Experience brings bearings, reliability, and knowledge of the exceptions. It also makes some moves automatic. An automatic move stops improving: you repeat it, you no longer practise it.

To improve, pick one precise move. A salesperson wants to explain a price better. Someone in support works on the first question that makes a request clear. A designer tries to make a screen easier to read with fewer elements.

Practice works when the piece is small enough to try, observe and redo. Repeating without feedback reinforces the same mistake. One precise comment changes the next attempt. An AI can give you that feedback on every attempt: ask it to critique your version against a criterion, then check its critique with someone who knows the trade.

Twelve years of experience are twelve years of progress if each year had its attempts and its feedback. Otherwise, it is the same year twelve times.

## Check this

Choose one skill and keep an example of your current work. Set a criterion: what the recipient understands, the mistake to avoid, the time the task takes.

Make three short attempts this week, with feedback between each one.

Compare the first and the last. Note what changed and what is still hard. If nothing moves, keep the goal and change the method.

## To discuss

What feedback would tell us we are really improving?