Experience Expires
What worked yesterday may fail spectacularly tomorrow.
Especially with AI.
The pace of change isn’t just fast – it’s exponential. The skills you mastered last quarter could be obsolete before the year ends.
This isn’t about staying current. It’s about staying relevant.
Consider the programmer who perfected COBOL in the 1980s. Or the social media expert from 2010. Or the prompt engineer from… last month.
Experience used to be our safety net. Our insurance policy against irrelevance.
Not anymore.
Today’s experience has an expiration date stamped right on it. Sometimes in invisible ink.
The trick isn’t accumulating experience – it’s developing the ability to let it go.
To unlearn.
To recognize when your hard-won knowledge has become a liability rather than an asset.
This is particularly true in AI, where the ground shifts beneath our feet daily. What worked in ChatGPT-3.5 might be counterproductive in 4.0. The perfect Midjourney prompt from version 5 could be nonsense in version 6.
The real skill isn’t mastery.
It’s adaptability.
The willingness to start fresh.
The courage to admit when your experience is holding you back.
This doesn’t mean experience is worthless. It means we need to hold it differently.
Think of experience as a library, not a fortress. Take what you need, leave what you don’t. Keep the doors open for new additions and renovations.
The most dangerous phrase in business isn’t “we’ve always done it this way.”
It’s “I know what I’m doing.”
Because in the age of AI, none of us really knows what we’re doing. We’re all beginners. All students. All explorers in uncharted territory.
Your twenty years of experience?
They’re valuable only if you’re willing to question them every morning.
Your expertise?
It’s useful only if you’re ready to rebuild it from scratch when necessary.
The future belongs not to the most experienced, but to the most adaptable.
To those who understand that in a world of exponential change, experience isn’t a destination.
It’s a starting point.
And every day, the clock is ticking.
