How Many Years Does it Take to Make a Good Designer?

I've been thinking a lot about age and enlightenment lately. About how the years we have on this earth correlate with wisdom and growth. Up until recently, I was convinced that the older you get, the more you know. That for every year you add to your life you gain more knowledge, more power, more understanding of how the universe works, and what your place is within it. That our lives are mapped out in a single line moving from left to right and that all of our experiences become dots on that very line until the day we die... and the line ends.

I remember  drawing a personal lifeline in elementary school when I was about 7. We stapled together a few sheets of paper end to end and mapped out how we saw our life. Starting at the left end of the paper, of course, and moving in a very structured linear format to the right, we had to assign different achievements for ourselves at different stages in our lives. I remember assigning a career as a supermodel to one of those dots. I went to college, got married and had kids - those all had dots. And I'm pretty sure I ended up dying in my sleep of a heart attack, which was the final dot. 

I hadn't thought about this lifeline project for some time. But as I ponder the question, "How Many Years Does it Take to Make a Good Designer?" I can't help but think about this linear format of living and how much value we often place on a designer's accrued years of experience. On how far to the right their dot is.

Out of the above three lifelines, can you tell who the best designer is?

We see it all the time. Years of experience being worn like a badge of honor. But is this the best way to gauge a designer's skills and creativity? If someone has 25 years - or 40 years - of design experience is it a given that they are going to be a fabulous designer? 

We are always surprised when a young mind does something great. When a 20 year old Mark Zuckerberg creates Facebook. When a 13 year old girl wins an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics. When a 10 year old can play the piano like nobody's business. We think, how amazing is it that a little mind, that has hardly even mapped itself out on its own lifeline, can do such great things? We tend to assume that because these minds haven't had many hours upon this earth that they must be some sort of freak of nature to do such great things. But if you were to look at their short years upon this earth, you would probably find that they have spent many, many hours working on what they are great at.  Probably more hours than a designer with 25 years of experience has spent designing.

Which brings me back to my question. I think there are certainly designers whose have earned their status and reputation after so many years in the industry. There is definitely something to be said for experience. So much of design is learned on the job, so a certain amount of years of work experience isn't just helpful, it's necessary. But is that to say that a designer with only five years of experience is only a fifth as valuable and skilled as a designer with 25 years of experience?  Or that a young designer can't come up with as creative of design solutions as a more seasoned designer?

Exactly how many years does it take to make a good designer?