Today I came across this quote from Robert A. Heinlein.
“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.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
It’s rare to see such a praise for being a generalist. I’ve been thinking a lot about this since I started to come up with strategies in Managing multiple interests.
I have a disperse attention and interests. I’m very easily amused by just about anything in the world; and I love that. The core idea here is to be competent in multiple areas. I don’t want or need to be very good at everything, but I want to be competent enough in the (many) things that I care about to the point that I can experience and enjoy them.
I often feel like I never finish anything and Shiny object syndrome is a thing, but I must not let this restrain me in pursuing my multiple interests. I can’t be good at everything (neither I want to), but I truly believe that I can do anything that I want to do and be competent enough in it to enjoy doing it.
I have to note that “competent enough in it to enjoy doing it” does not mean that I have to be competent by outside standards to enjoy doing something. In fact, it is perfectly fine to enjoy doing something even if you suck at it. Being “competent” in this context is totally dependent on my expectations for myself in a given activity. In this sense, the journey to reach competence itself is a great reward for me. I love the process of improving and getting better at doing things.
This is also not an excuse to be shallow on everything that I pursue. It is the realization that it’s fine to be shallow in an area if that’s enough for me at that moment. It is also the understanding that there are some areas that I want to get deeper into, and I should be free to do so. The Pareto principle is a great foundation in the balance of how deep I should go on a given subject.
There’s also this concept of X-shaped relations between depth and breadth of knowledge and skills. That’s a nice way of visualizing this relation.
References
https://reason.com/2020/02/29/specialization-is-for-insects/