The case for being a generalist

Jack of all trades, master of none

I feel like I can attribute most of my successes in life to being a generalist. Being okay at many things is significantly easier to do than being the best at one or two things. It takes an incredible amount of time, talent, and grit to be the best in a craft. At the end of the day, there's always going to be someone else who wants to spend more time practicing, studying, or working to be an expert in an area than I do. Being a generalist means it's okay to not be the best - you just need to be good enough.

That might sound like a lazy approach to work, but stacking multiple skills and experiences ends up creating a very unique skillset for almost every individual. This makes sense why so many peolpe end up being fairly generalist - and why numerous articles have popped up in the last few years talking about the benefits of being a generalist. In fact, the quote about being a Jack of all trades was originally meant to highlight the strength of a generalist. We often hear the first half of the quote as "Jack of all trades, master of none, but the whole quote reads:

A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.

This quote - originally a compliment to imply a person is skilled in multiple areas - seems to now have a semi-negative connotation that someone isn't really good at anything. As a generalist, I often feel that about myself.

The case for being a specialist

I work with very smart and talented people. I'm often faced with imposter syndrome when I see some of the incredible work my teammates do. The process typically looks something like this:

• Thinking to myself: "Why can't I come up with solutions as elegant as them?" or "I wish I were as good at them at picking up new skills.""
• I'll make a note to learn about their solution more.
• I'll look it up in my free time, and decide after an hour or so that it's probably better that I don't spend hours of my life learning something that I most likely won't be use in my career.

So, why do I never push myself more to go deeper into areas like niche technologies, or invest deeper in developing my hobbies? This is why I think being a specialist, or at least adopting a specialist mindset is important to do - at least for me - and probably others who find themselves in the generalist camp.

Limit beliefs

When you see someone do something impressive, is your first thought "I think I could do that with enough practice" or "I won't ever be able to do that"? Maybe it depends on what you are seeing the person do. Why do we wave our hand away at seemingly impossible tasks instead of pushing ourselves to attempt them? Side note - maybe this isn't that common and I just end up doing mental gymnastics to try to justify why I'm not good at something. If that's the case then maybe this post isn't as useful as I thought - but go ahead and humor me by reading the rest of it.

Either way, I wanted to refelct on why I do this. I think the older I get and the more I go through my life routines, the less willing I am to pick up new skills. It's starting to make sense where the phrase "stuck in their old ways" came from. I used to always be so surprised that my parents refused to learn about new technologies, but now I'm thinking its because they built a life that made them happy without it, so they probably just never gave it as much value or cared to spend time learning those skills as I did. This feels like "life handcuffs". We only have so much time and mental energy in a day to do things, and with work and home duties we often don't have time for anything else. Ideally we can dedicate some time to interests and hobbies, but clearly we don't have enough time to learn about and become an expert at everything that sounds interesting to us.

Maybe this is why parents try to push their kids to play every sport, or go to a specific college; they have this regret of not doing certain things in their earliy lives and have given up trying for themselves due to life committments. They ran out of time in the good days to achieve their goals, so now they try to make up by living vicariously through their kids.

So many things, not enough time

So, in the end, it's about time - or at least that's how it feels to me. If I had unlimited time would I actually learn all of these things? Could I learn that many things? Even with unlimited time, the human brain definitely has limits of how much knowledge it can hold - especially when so many crafts require deep levels of memorization to successful. So almost certainly not.

I don't think that means I shouldn't try to go deeper in a few areas. There's something incredibly rewarding about working hard and seeing the progress you make. In fact, I think that's one of the best ways to find more happiness in life. My problem is I end up jumping from area to area instead of going deep in one. It's like I can't keep my focus in an area for long enough to get true depth of knowledge. Learning the bascis is always so fun and exciting, but once the initial excitement wears off and I realize how much work something requires to truly become great I will shy away from digging deeper - usually in the form of picking up some new hobby.

So, if you find yourself in a similar spot as me, and you feel like you don't have enough time, the problem is most likely that you should be focusing your time on fewer areas where you can truly go deep. For me, that means 3 areas to focus on max (this hurts even typing out because I always want to add more things to the list - but I know if will end up benefiting me in the long run). I've tried this a few times in the past, but I hope that documenting it and making a more intentional effort will help me stay more on track.