“Jack of all trades but master of none” goes the saying. It implies that being a generalist means you’re not really good at anything.
I prefer: “Master of none but jack of all trades.”
The temptation in today’s world is to try to be a specialist. That might be great for your career early on. But if you try to min-max your life excessively, you’ll eventually end up pigeonholed and plateau.
A one-note musician is boring.
Learn different things. Always be learning. Always plan an escape route.
Interesting reactions happen when multiple skills collide.
This is what happens to a specialist (master of one) vs. a generalist (jack of all trades):
A specialist will plateau unless he acquires more skills. Meanwhile, a generalist will have many skills he can combine into new ones that adapt to the times.
A specialist is an expert at a few things. The specialist has chosen a few areas to dive deep into. Most people can’t exceed them at those few things:
In contrast, combining skills or disciplines gives you more unique and useful skills. Here are two relatively adjacent skills. By themselves, they may not be good enough to meet the threshold needed to complete a task (well enough):
When you combine them, you get a product that is greater than its sum:
The combined skill may now meet or exceed a threshold required for a particular task.
When you fertilize your soil with a mix of things, you get serendipity. This creates opportunities for creativity. See this discussion by Reid Hoffman and J.J. Abrams:
Eventually, you can do anything and become a modern-day renaissance person. At the least, you’ll know you’ll be able to do anything.
If you want to be able to write, cook, prepare and file your own taxes, manage and optimize your finances, be in shape, dress reasonably well, play an instrument, have a successful professional career, run a business, and build websites, you can.
If you want to add more to your talent stack, you can. This idea doesn’t even occur to a specialist, who will often hire away the problem he can’t solve by himself. There’s nothing wrong with that, but how satisfying is that really?
When the world goes to shit, the only currency you’ll have for your survival is your skills. The jack of all trades is more likely to survive.
My hope with Mastery of None is to inspire you to consume different sources of insights like a balanced meal, make them your own by implementing what you learn, and create your own skill combinations.
If you have questions, comments, or complaints for me, email Brian at “brian [ ] masteryofnone.com”.