These are excerpts from the author’s book “Deep,” which contains eight of his small books published in the form of Wisdom Literature covering different aspects of life: Facing troublemakers, dealing with pain, personal financial issues, gastronomy, reading, criticizing, inspiring, and feeling always good to go.

Series 6: Criticizing.

Criticizing within Your Field of Expertise

• One of the most remarkable aspects of your ingenuity when you criticize within your field of expertise is to make your criticism understandable to others outside the field, as far as they may be concerned.

• Lengthy experience in the field may be an obstacle to exploring and absorbing new opportunities and horizons within it. Try to be open to everything that is new or strange in your field, and do not reject it just because you find it weird or because you have not experienced it before.

• It is important that your criticism in your area of expertise is specific and precise, but this should not push you to close the doors to other options for analyzing the viewpoint you are criticizing.

• When you are open to other fields, in general, you are more able to give a comprehensive vision to things within your field.

• Being an expert in your field does not necessarily mean that you are highly susceptible to or have a delicate sense of criticism. Pay attention specifically to developing your critical skills in your field, in parallel with developing your knowledge and experience in it in general.

• If the criticism or advice required is simple, do not complicate it just to show off your broad experience in the field.

• The most significant in criticism is not the quantity of it but the quality, manifested by addressing any subject directly and to the point, especially in the scientific and practical fields. Even when many theoretical areas call for extensive criticism, this should not be at the expense of addressing the subject directly and to the point but by enriching the point that is addressed directly.

• The critical sense seems to be the same in each field, in terms of paying attention to what requires criticism and then expressing it brilliantly, but the form of criticism depends on the nature of each field and the traditions of work.

• If your specialization is directly related to criticism in your field of expertise, this requires you to pay intense attention to continuously developing your talent and skills for criticism in general, in parallel with your regular interest in developing technical expertise in various aspects of the field.

• Expand your awareness of criticism within your field of work by looking at similar experiences in the same field of work in other cultures. This will explode new and surprising sources of knowledge that will enrich your critical experience in your field, probably beyond your expectations.