🤯Unknown Unknowns #130 - Generalists and Specialists

“Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse.” - The No-Stats All-Star - Michael Lewis

In the NBA, Shane Battier was a “Glue Guy.”  Someone who does the dirty work without the recognition.  He won two NBA championships and an NCAA championship but was never close to the highest paid player on his team.

Specialists are easy to appreciate.  They are visible and it’s easy to tie a narrative to what they do.  And specialists are rewarded for their visibility.  It’s easy to justify rewards, promotions, and salaries when you can point at numbers and say “I did this!”  Even in the zeitgeist, almost every famous person is known for their specialty.

So why would you want to do the dirty work when it’s unappreciated?

In my finance career, I was a glue guy.  I volunteered for anything, cleaned up messes, facilitated information flow, built out processes.  It was easier for my coworkers, who had clearly defined roles, to get promoted.  But I got bored quickly, especially when it’s repetitive.  And if I saw an opportunity to improve something, I felt compelled to do it even if it wasn’t in my area.

Being a generalist can be limiting, especially in the short term.  It can be frustrating explaining what you can do.  And when your boss leaves, it can be career threatening if the new boss doesn’t value what you do.

The conflict between what I valued and what was good for my career was a struggle.  When I heard of the term multipotentialite, it felt liberating.  It’s ok to have multiple interests?  Other people like that exist? 

But the idea seemed more like a band-aid than the answer.  You’re still fitting your interests into predefined buckets.  The problem is that we classify ourselves into buckets.  I’m a salesman.  I’m a data scientist.  I’m a luthier.  Even if the buckets are esoteric, they’re still constraining.

Creating your identity around these labels is the problem.  Identities limit us to our preconceived notions.  

The problem isn’t that we’re square pegs trying to fit into round holes and we can’t find the right shapes, the problem is that we don’t realize that the holes aren’t real.

We need to find the right environment and match our skills to that environment.  We are niche-fillers.  Don’t make it harder by using someone else’s niches.

Thanks to

Michael Dean

for feedback on an early version of this essay.

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📝 Writing of the Week:

I wrote an essay on how to navigate filling niches last year, The Dance of the Bees: Finding Your Path as a Creator.

I’ve been writing unpolished, around 100-word mini-essays.  Just reflections on ideas from podcasts or things on the news.  Here are the latest:

1️⃣ Pride

2️⃣ Fear

3️⃣ Learning Through Experience

4️⃣ Aren't You Bored?

5️⃣ Medicine

6️⃣ Daylight Saving Time

7️⃣ Margin of Error and False Positives

8️⃣ Opportunity Cost

9️⃣ Subjective Experiences

🔟 Self-Reflection and Pharmacology

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🔍 Discoveries:

1️⃣ The internet allows you to explore all the interests that you have. Tokyo has thousands of tiny specialty shops and Mac Martine compares how the internet makes this possible on a global level.

🔗 The Internet is Tokyo

2️⃣ Michelle Khare reflects on how her YouTube show has forced her to think about all the skills that she’s learned.

“If Houdini has taught me anything in the last 6 weeks, it's how to find the power in packaging the skills that make you you. That anyone, no matter how obscure or random your talents may seem, can find success. Challenge Accepted has often left me feeling like a ‘Jack of All Trades’ and ‘Master of None’ but now I'm starting to see how that can be often times better than a ‘Master of One.’” - Michelle Khare

3️⃣ Venkatesh Rao asks, “Is it possible to systematically do things to put yourself on a path to mastery, and know you’re on one, without actually knowing what that path is until you’re already far down it?”

🔗 The Calculus of Grit

4️⃣ “Specializing is ‘not even wrong’” - Tom Critchlow

🔗 Rejecting Specialization

5️⃣ This podcast discusses an idea from Robert Anton Wilson - that we are directed by preconceived notions and confirmation bias rules us.

🔗 Personality Hacker Podcast - What The Thinker Thinks, The Prover Proves

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💬 Quote of the Week:

Flawed stories of the past shape our views of the world and our expectations for the future. Narrative fallacies arise inevitably from our continuous attempt to make sense of the world. The explanatory stories that people find compelling are simple; are concrete rather than abstract; assign a larger role to talent, stupidity, and intentions than to luck; and focus on a few striking events that happened rather than on the countless events that failed to happen. Any recent salient event is a candidate to become the kernel of a causal narrative. - Daniel Kahneman

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👨‍🔧 If you need help in your writing or creative journey, perhaps I can help you:

⇒ Concept Crafting - Have an idea for an essay but not sure how to get it on paper?

⇒ Whiteboard Ideation - Through a one-hour call, we’ll unlock your ideas

⇒ Course Catalyst - Get the most out of taking an online course

And one way to help me:

⇒ I’m always looking for feedback, and in Cate’s above essay, she suggests this tool for giving feedback anonymously.

Anonymous Feedback

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You can find more of my writing at chr.iswong.com.

Questions, suggestions, complaints?  Email me at [email protected].  

Feedback welcome.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a friend or two.  And feel free to send anything you find interesting to me!

Leaving you in peace,

Chris