I’m 28 and I’ve had lots of issues with what to do with myself and what field to go into, what to study, insatisfaction with my resume, etc etc. Not only have I moved around a lot but my mind moves around just as much.

On a side note, on the Briggs-Meyers test, most generalists are INTJ’s or ENTP’s which is interesting. And as a PS, I’m a lefty too. PPS – creativegeneralist.com is all about being a generalist, glad I finally figured out what I am…that is has a name.

Cheers

Everything you know and do today will probably help you do things in the future that you didn’t even imagine today.

Being a generalist is great, but comes with a great deal of pressure at the begining of the road, even if you’ll get great rewards later on.

As a recent graduate in law, I’ve found my polymath interests to be extremely useful because cases happen in any and every field of interest- one minute you’ll be looking at social policy and the next private morality or intellectual property rights; the answers to those questions may lie way back in history or in agéd philosophical writings although the question is firmly rooted in today’s technology.

Here in the UK I was astonished to hear it stated time and time again during a press feeding-frenzy on religious arbitration (which was being used as an alternative method of adjudication in some ethnic communities) that there is no legal system in the world where citizens are treated differently according to their religious beliefs. A cursory grasp of world news should have thrown up two prime examples in Malaysia and Australia but blinkered academics and hacks chose to paint the issue as a curiosity of English law….

Furthermore, I speak several languages and recently started started on my fourth foreign language; I chose Finnish as it is meant to be very alien and difficult. I was looking for a challenge and I certainly got it, but what has really surprised me is the extent to which seemingly unrelated bits of other languages have been able to help me out. English is proving to be very useful for some of the word order, while familiarity with German word-combining is a real boon when I’m looking at words I don’t know- the instinct to separate THEN translate is already in my skillset.

Anyway, great post and extra kudos for including the bit about being left handed!

-Robert A. Heinlein

Though I started very late in my life (long story) I’ve been writing, programming, designing and now live a lucrative life through the front-end and back-end web work I tought myself how to do, and one of the things I’m now looking forward to getting into is music. Even with no aspirations to make it a profession, it’ll be a lot of fun.

I also agree with you and sambeau that mastering anything is easier than we think, especially when we consider how many skills overlap, learning multiple things at once helps us everywhere. The medici effect, I believe it’s called.

Anecdotally, one of the earlier conversations in my life involved my father telling me one Sunday that football players (american) would occasionally take ballet lessons, in part because they were opposite disciplines, and because a player could learn agility, balance, strength, finesse, and plainly how to jump high, skills that would help him in his actual career. The conversation spun off into ways one skill from an opposite sport could help in another. I don’t know if the specifics are true or just crazy stuff my dad told me, but the principle made enough sense.

To answer your question though, I think a generalist scares those who aren’t. For one, they might have a difficult time grasping a person’s ability to do multiple things well if they themselves cannot, just as I have a hard time grasping that some people really can do only one thing well. Beyond that, I suspect it’s conditioning. You heard it your whole life through, as did I and everyone else, that we should specialize. The intent is good, speaking as a parent myself now, we’re try to teach our children to focus, but it can backfire. If you hear a certain thing enough times, it becomes true, whether it is or not. It takes a strong will and mind to overcome brainwashing like that.

Thanks for the great read.

That’s a really interesting point about the arts going from “known” to the “unknown”, and science goes the other way — wow, I’ll be quoting you on that, if that’s okay!

And I think you’re totally right that our ability to function, think and problem-solve in different contexts is a specialisation in itself. My friend Stephanie Booth started talking about this as “poly-expertise” in a follow-up blogpost to mine.

Unfortunately, it is still a hard thing to sell when it’s difficult to sum up who we are and what we do in three words that fit on a business card …

sambeau/Katherine — I have worked with big and small companies as well as big organisations, and typically I found that being a generalist meant I could pretty much chart what I wanted to do after I gain the trust of my supervisors or bosses. I just wished I figured that bit out when I was younger, it would have made life so much less painful. When I got the hang of this, it really helped me settle well into an employed role. Basically, take control of what you want to do, and who you want to be, and show that you can achieve and can be trusted — something which is no different whether you’re a generalist or specialist.

That said, having tried my hand at running a company and having been an independent/freelance consultant, I’ve found that being a generalist really helps in both cases — in my field anyway. As a consultant, it’s an asset to be able to port your existing knowledge in multiple fields and figure out what’s relevant to the client you’re working with.