Orange is now seriously the new black. Tim Ferris, an Entrepreneur and angel investor proves that you shouldn’t agree with the popular phrase: Jack of all trades, Master of None and I seriously agree with him!
He is an entrepreneur, angel investor, author, blogger and a motivational speaker and he has achieved great success doing all these proving that the popular phrase is a myth.
Aza Raskin a Serial Entrepreneur and Inventor, said “Great ideas are almost always great ideas in hindsight, So if you want to have great ideas, learn lots of fields and then combine. I’m not the smartest mathematician, or physicist, but it is the combination of these fields that makes me come up with unique ideas”.
It is entirely possible to be a jack of all trades, master of many. Specialization is for insects.
So without further ado, here are his top 5 reasons why you should become a jack of all trades which he prefers to call a generalist.
5. The popular phrase is an artificial pairing
Mastering a skill is different from perfecting a skill. David Cole, a designer and blogger also agrees with this too.
He says as a designer, it’s wrong to be labeled a unicorn.
This has been going on in the industry for too long that many people with great skills are becoming really rare; because they have to pick between being great at one thing or mediocre at many things.
Tim says that it is possible to become world-class in almost any skill within one year.
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4. Generalist often always run the show
Steve jobs wasn’t a better programmer than the engineers at apple, he joined many of the skills he had to become one of the greatest CEO’s of his time.
Of course he was good at programming, he was good at negotiating, he was a great product marketer and most of all he was good at design.
All of apples products have made record-breaking sales and one of its reasons was because of its sleek and premium design all under the supervision of jobs.
A great designer would always know about Photoshop, colors, sketching, typography and coding.
Typography teaches you about kerning, font pairing, and legibility.
But typography itself is just one part of what is called graphic design, which is the unified application of many other skills like color theory, layout design, and so on.
You need soft skills to thread everything together.
3. Boredom is failure
Generalizing and experimenting prevents failure while specializing guarantees it.
2. Diversity of intellectual playgrounds builds confidence instead of fear
This is almost self-explanatory.
People should be able to try their hands at different things.
it can boost a lot of confidence, it can also drive away competition.
Google is getting better everyday and they are always among the top companies in the world.
They are almost everywhere (Android, Project Loon, Chrome OS, Android Wear, Android Auto) and this is boosting up their sales and giving competitors like Apple a hard time.
1. Jack of all trades is more fun
The specialist who imprisons himself in self-inflicted one-dimensionality — pursuing and impossible perfection — spends decades stagnant or making imperceptible incremental improvements while the curious generalist consistently measures improvement in quantum leaps.
It is only the latter who enjoys the process of pursuing excellence.