The Top 5 Reasons to Be a Jack of All Trades

There is an excellent book called The Renaissance Soul by Margaret Lobenstine that talks about this and why some of us are meant to focus on more than just one thing. I highly recommend it.

Nice to see a post on this issue in an age that pressures us to find our “one true passion” and focus only on developing a single skill. Many of us have broad skills and interests and need the intellectual stimulation of multiple pursuits to keep us going.

Can it be that I opened a friend’s email today and ended up surfing to this article which I have never found before? I have been in a quandary about how to best market my “jill of all trades” talent. While I’m a writer and editor, I really am best at project development and organizing which widely uses my writing and editing talent. All four give me a unique and wide range of what I can do, but it is this article which I really needed to tell me that it’s okay I can’t seem to find one niche. Thank you! Now, what to call myself; I’ve never figured that one out!

I heard the saying that you can do whatever you want and at any different level mastery as long as you good in that skill that pays the bills.

How does a generalist demand specialist wages?

BD

Tim,

As a 46 year old former corporate manager, I have seen a trend taking place in recent years in corporate America that seems to indicate specialization is the key. The generalist seems to be unable to penetrate the job market effectively for lack of a label that HR can understand. I myself have struggled in promoting myself within the corporate structure for this reason.

I now have my own business and my general knowledge is more of an advantage.

After reading your book, I have decided to put into practice your methods of automating a business and freeing myself and family for greater things. My problem is, As a generalist, I am having trouble defining a market and product to build my business around. I NEED MY MUSE! Can you give some methods on narrowing down the possibilities?

Thanks Brother,

Cole

Hi Timothy,

I just got your book on audio (iTunes)… I just wanted to say thanks for putting it together… what an eye opener.

Sincerely,

JF Grissom

San Diego, CA.

I believe the ability to master many things and quickly is a function of IQ.

I believe what you say holds true for those with high IQ but not those with lesser IQ’s.

I have seen that fact reported and as a holder of a high IQ have seen it in daily practice.

I used to believe everyone could do anything because I can but after years of encouraging others beyond their limits I sadly realize it simply isn’t true for most people.

With a higher IQ comes an almost insatiable NEED to explore many topics. I often wonder if those with lesser IQ’s and needs aren’t happier and more content with their mastery of a small part of the universe.

Generalists recognize that the 80/20 principle applies to skills: 20% of a language’s vocabulary will enable you to communicate and understand at least 80%, 20% of a dance like tango (lead and footwork) separates the novice from the pro, 20% of the moves in a sport account for 80% of the scoring, etc. Is this settling for mediocre.Thanks again for a great book!

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, write a sooet, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, solve equations, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight effciently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. Robert A. Heinleim

Echoes my own thoughts exactly.

When people ask me what I do, I counter their question with what did Leonardo da Vinci do? Was he a painter? Was he a sculptor? Was he an inventor?

Leonardo wasn’t pigeonholed, so what’s with the modern preoccupation with defining us all by a single occupation?

Tim,

Because the product I support is *SO* f’ing complex, I feel that becoming an expert in it is the only way to be successful in my position.

But then I read your blog from time to time and find posts like this. You are one seriously sharp knife. You cut through the b.s. and go to the heart of the matter. This sentence struck me severely, and I had to stop and internalize it for awhile:

====

Lack of intellectual stimulation, not superlative material wealth, is what drives us to depression and emotional bankruptcy. Generalizing and experimenting prevents this, while over-specialization guarantees it.

====

You made my confront my main issue: while the product I support is complex, it is no longer intellectually stimulating or fun. I do it because it brings in a paycheck.

I suffer from medical depression and I think the position I am in goes a long way towards keeping me ‘down’. We’re a single income family of 6. I make enough money to support my family and we’re comfortable, but I hate my job and my lack of zest for life that I used to have several years ago.

HEEEEEELP!!!!

p.s. I live in Austin but couldn’t afford to get an Interactive badge for SXSW. I truly wish I could have come. All the best.

DL

Tim – kick ass post and I couldn’t agree more, as a proclaimed renaissance man by friends and family. I relish the challenges, enjoyment and fulfillment that comes out of taking up new hobbies and interests. I agree you can become world class at anything. My challenge is mostly from taking up too many hobbies at once and pacing myself a bit in order to become masters of them. I think the balance of left brain/right brain activities makes you much more capable of anything you set out to do. Loved your talk at SXSW and look forward to keeping up with your blog and tweets. Just remember, Maslow Forgot about Beer (the title of my blog ;)). Keep it up!

Is it possbile for a 14 year old to become jack of all trades? Cause I’m trying to excel in tennis, video production, graphics, algebra II, and dance. I have to balance school work and my hobbies, but I want to know your suggestion. Should I put all my efforts into school so I can go to good college and master those skills later, or should I find a balance? Please reply ASAP!

Interesting. Gave me a new look into the wisdom behind Catholic medieval and rennaisance philosophy and culture, of being universal…

Amazing article! Very thought provoking-and I am specifically thinking how this is applied to character development as well. Dynamic, engaging, and fun people pursue a multitude of interests and curiosities, often employing extensive and articulate vocabularies, and attend to both themselves and their social networks in genuine and authentic ways. They are the beautiful, smart, funny people we all want to get to know and when friendship is established we enjoy “being” with. And the wonderful part is none of this is developed by specialization. Afterall the beautiful woman who flawlessly paints her face and gracefully glides through the room in a beaded gown but has nothing to say becomes a hollow ornament. The geek that can speak fluent German AND Klingon effortlessly with his friends but finds himself utterly tongue-tied around ALL females of the species is really cuttin down his chances of gettin laid. These are cliche and extreme examples of course but even the more subtle forms of cultural inhibition are dangerous and can be just as miserable. Such as the struggling art student that takes herself and her emotions way too seriously to let go and get some groove on at the local dance club. Or the father that has expertly planned for his family to arrive at the same cabin in the same woods with the same great fishing down to the minute. These are not the people we want to hang out with much. What we would like to to engage with the folks that have something new to say. Wear something unique and intriguing and colorful. Or look like they are enjoying all sorts of hilarious inside jokes. What are these people thinking? Feeling? Doing? Where are they going? How did they get there? How do they look so good?

Generalization. The All you can eat buffet of Life.

On a positive end-being dynamic, curious, cultured, and multifaceted is very attractive and affords you the opportunity to “play” with others. Banter. Explore. Surprise. Inspire. And most treasured experience of all is the exchange of insight and experience and inspired creativity-dealing in the multiplication of value rather than merely addition. Afterall-any animal added to another animal can make an additional animal.

But what animal can throw a really great party?

I didn’t read all the commenting posts to this-I had to generalize-even though I’m sure I missed some awesome one. But the spirit of each one of them is largely the same grand feeling.

Here’s a quote I was reminded of, from Robert A. Heinlin’s Time Enough for Love:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

I love the Heinlein quote, it sums life up for me!

As someone who’s been called a Renaissance Man more than once, I feel like I’ve just found a second home!

I’ve only just started the book and I’m loving it.

As a kid, I thought I’d like to be James Bond, able to draw on whatever skill is required to handle any situation. I wanted to be McGyver, to solve problems logically and instead of shooting them or blowing them up. Leonardo Da Vinci became my idol. Learn the art of science and the science of art. I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on since the age of four in pretty much every field imaginable. Martial arts, basic military training (I’m Irish so no danger of going to war!), playing the guitar, singing, working as a potter, a stint in McDonalds, an IT Diploma and 9 years and counting living in Paris, France married to the love of my life.

Yet something’s missing.

And I’m still trying to find it. How do you tie it all together? How can you use that generalist non-specialist mindset to get ahead?

Too complex to categorise…….I love that. And I’d rather be familiar to competent in a dozen fields than a world leader in one single area with little or no knowledge in any other.

One other thing to note. I can’t recall the exact references (though I am sure there are many beyond a couple), but there has been more than a few inventions and cunning edge discoveries discovered simply because of knowledge in another field. The one I am thinking of is a discovery made in a field of science due to the founder drawing something from the knowledge of violin playing. Great post! It is very inspiring.

I think generalist-specialist may be a false dichotomy anyway. My suspicion is that most talented and highly successful people are or end up being particularly capable at accomplishing some particular thing or cluster of things. The trick is that “things and clusters of things” as they exist in the real world are necessarily interdisciplinary because disciplines are arbitrary constructs. The most valuable person in most situations is the person who has the abilities and sensitivities of a specialist in the randomly combined handful of areas that are pertinent to that situation. That person is always going to look like a generalist – at least in that narrow job history.

Hey Tim

Great post

I’m writing a book on this subject, advice for people juggling many talents and passions. Can I get an interview with you? Or cite part of this post? Thanks! enjoying following you on Twitter

Lisa

P.S. I have an apartment in Paris you could use

Thanks for posting this, Tim. I couldn’t agree more. I happen to have en endless well of curiosity, it seems, and I’ve spent most of my life trying out the many different things I want to know how to do. For years, I was mediocre at most of them. I’m still mediocre at some. And others, I’m just getting started.

At the same time, a teenage passion for cars now has me able to lube points, change water pumps, and do all sorts of things under the hood I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. The same for computers. I was a geek then, but now I get to be the hero who can fix most people’s tech problems.

I wrote for fun. Now I do it for a living (and a good one). I paint, first not so well but now not so badly. I draw (always have) and had a published weekly cartoon strip for a couple of years.

I cook, sometimes pretty well and sometimes badly. I play the guitar. I juggle. I’m learning right now about photography. I’ve learned how to travel and now live overseas (Paris) a good part of the year. My French is coming along. Next, my wife and I plan to tackle Spanish.

I say this not to brag (well, maybe a little… because I’m proud of how these skills piled up) but because I never would have imagined, when I had few or none of these skills under my belt, that I’d get this far. Nor did I realize how much each newly mastered and divergent skill would give me both the energy and the zeal to tackle the next thing on the list.

For instance, I’m learning WordPress. For years, I couldn’t get anyone to create a site for me that was quite right. Mostly because I didn’t know the possibilities myself, and couldn’t direct them. Finally I just decided, I have to learn to do this… and it’s coming together. Not perfect. But a year from now, I’m guessing I’ll be pretty good at it.

Anyway… great post.

You’ve got a quick wit and you’re clearly a clever thinker.

Good stuff.

P.S. And no, at this point I haven’t read your book yet. But what I’ve seen on this site convinces me. I’m going to go check it out right now.

I learned the value of being a Jack; when up against an economist I would pull upon my IT background and knowledge of systems (something the economist may not be as familiar), but when up against an IT expert I would use my economics background or business (which they may not be as familiar with)…in other words, you can exploit the expert’s limitations.

this may already of been said but

how does one know what 20%

of the information they will need

(example when learning guitar there are

dozens of cords but for the sake of

idea lets say there are 10 which 2

are most used? do you really need to know

that augmented F sharp cord? but what of the g cord?)

so how does one go about finding the 20%?

questions:

What if everyone was a generalist? If everyone was a generalist, we would still have people who mastered some occupations better than others. How would one generalist give up his skills to another?

I bought the book two days ago. I’ve been reading this blog most of the day. this post especially rings with me. I’ve always wondered why we never strive to be like the great polymaths like Leonardo, Michelangelo, etc.

Why the obsession with specialising.

As such I’ve thrown myself into learning more and more. Some of my personal goals include ju jutsu & iai jutsu, poetry, philosophy, break dancing, yoga, Spanish and Japanese.

Since expanding my horizons like this the world and my life has become 1000 times more fulfilling. I’m re-discovering lost hobbies and interests. I love it. I love the fact I’ve found someone who so successfully displays this too. One hell of an inspiration.

As Robert A. Heinlein wrote, “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

I’ve always believed this, though my personal reasoning is most in line with the boredom argument. As soon as I understand something with any depth, I’m ready to move on. It’s not the destination of knowledge but the journey of learning that I enjoy.

Seth Godin has tried to make me question that, but it’s one of the few places he is short-sighted. As he writes, [paraphrased, badly] if you are looking to hire somebody, you hire the absolute best your money can afford. My retort: who then does that hiring?

Yadgyu – a couple of things:

First, you say not everyone can become a CEO, and then you use Michael Jackson as your counterexample. Many more people become CEOs than become anything comparable to Michael Jackson.

To stick with that example, Michael makes the case for those of us promoting generalism! You can say he was a “specialist” “entertainer”; I think it’s more accurate to see him as an uber-generalist: singer, writer/composer, dancer, recording artist, and video creator/producer are all different specialities. (MJ’s back-up dancers are specialists; he was a generalist.) He was also a philanthropist and, according to news reports, aspired to make feature films.

Even within the realm of music-making, his unique contribution was breaking the genre barriers between “white” rock ‘n’ roll (e.g., guitar riff elements and such) and “black” R&B and soul.

So – your example argues against your point.

The inherent meaning of expert means you are actually a master of all of the minute parts of that which become the “thing” you are an expert at… thereby making you a generalist…

Think – a banker is good at math, people skills, forcasting, complex spreadsheets, risk anaylsis, risk avoidance.

A bartender is good at selling, mixing, tasting, serving.

No one is a specialist. People who promote specialists are either your boss, or are too scared to take a shot at living.

Boo crappy examples that don’t prove a point. Hooray – having many talents and outlets.

To some degree the argument is semantic. So, I’ll offer my definitions! A good generalist is a multi-specialist who, because of the multiple perspectives, is able to “break rules” intelligently. The person who drifts from thing to thing with no intellectual or social compass is not a generalist. The “true” specialist is limited by his/her rules and stumped when a different approach is the only thing that will work. The generalist is characterized by lack of such limits.

You want someone to come into your company and conduct a training, you get a specialist. You want someone to tell you whether it’s really training you need or whether it’s really a new recruitment program or to fire the CEO because his affairs with underlings are causing havoc, better get a generalist; you’ll pay the specialist trainer tens or hundreds of thousands, and everyone will still be blind to the problem.

You do not want to be a specialist when your line of work is, say, selling newspaper advertising. Much, much better to be a newspaper ad specialist who ALSO knows something about, say, social networking and can make the shift when craigslist comes along.

Back to the Michael Jackson example. As I conceptualize it, there are great entertainers who fall into both categories. Their trajectory tends to be different. I’ll take the low-hanging fruit first, since the two are often compared.

Elvis – specialist: though he was certainly a genre crosser and a genre creator (even if he did so passively), he was a singer/performer who did some arrangement and writing of songs for himself to sing. Actor? The consensus is no. His philanthropy seems to have been merely personal gifting. He wasn’t a dancer. And so on.

MJ – multi-specialist really – no specialist songwriter OR singer OR dancer could accomplish those videos that made him famous.

I’ll make a comparison with another entertainer. Jerry Garcia was a specialist. Designed guitars for himself to play, yet look at the Grateful Dead movie he did some directing for. You can see, it’s a bit “off” as a film because he could not really direct. Neither Elvis nor Jerry Garica – who both made big accomplishments in their specialities – could really get through in the generalist realm.

(And I say that as a bigger fan of those two than of MJ.)

“”Jack of all trades, master of none, though ofttimes better than master of one.”

Hey Tim,

By not focusing on only one thing, you constantly stimulate your creativity and increase the potential to come up with something great.

When your passion spawns many things, you are likely to combine them into something great. Just like artists who were great at one medium brought in elements from other things they were passionate about (The Beatles), or businesses who fused 2 disparate elements to create something remarkable (Apple fusing art and devices).

It’s actually easier to learn the 20% (of the 20/80) of things you’re passionate about and be able to combine them into something unique and great than focus exclusively on becoming the best at one thing (unlikely).

Scott Adams of Dilbert on how you have 2 options in life:

1. Become the best at one specific thing.

2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

“The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. In my case, I can draw better than most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the average standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most people. The magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes. It’s the combination of the two that makes what I do so rare. And when you add in my business background, suddenly I had a topic that few cartoonists could hope to understand without living it.”

By combining multiple things you’re pretty great at–but not the best–you can create remarkable things that are uniquely you.

Awesome list Tim, inspiring to hear this, especially in this day and age. So true how we should be more like Da Vinci than a NBA star,

Oleg

That was absolutely beautiful and brilliant to me, and much needed to be shared with the world. Thank you so much Tim, that really touched my heart. I’ve always felt similar, and my personal vision is strongly involved with creativity and the Generalist concept.

Like Lisa, I’d also love to cite a line or two from this post in a book I’m writing, and if you prefer me not to, I totally respect that.

Maximize peak experiences 🙂

Awesome.