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Since I have last written a post, I have attended an improv comedy class (you be the judge of its effectiveness), attempted to learn HTML, tried to figure out how to best invest what little savings I have, revised a few pages of my screenplay and attempted to make a chicken chili (operative word being “attempted”). Admittedly, at times it feels like I have bitten off more than I can chew, and I feel that by focusing my energy on all of these things, I might not be focusing enough on one specific thing. But I do believe that the best part of being young is the ability to experiment with relatively little risk. Indeed, the only way to discover what you love or you are good at is to try as many things as possible (Note to SG: within reason).

The author of LifeReboot (www.lifereboot.com), a great self-help blog, recently admonished his readers, “Remember that you aren’t an expert at everything. You can’t be, because it’s not possible — and if you try to be, you end up being an expert in only one thing: Mediocrity.” But mediocrity is not necessarily the logical result of trying everything, well-roundedness is. His statement assumes that skills/information learned doing one task cannot carry over into another. The truth of the matter is that every thing you do, all the experiences you have, are symbiotic and not isolated from each other.

Last week I was having a brainstorming session with a few buddies about a business idea. It was our first discussion, and things were going slowly. One member of the group kept shooting my other friend’s ideas down right off the bat. At that point, I told them both about “Yes and-ing,” which is an improv term for not rejecting anything your partner in a scene says. Instead, you accept what they say as valid and build off of that idea to form other ideas. Within 30 minutes, we had a list of 30 ideas; 29 more ideas than the first 2 hours of the conversation. While we might have come up with those ideas anyway, I like to think that my study of improv techniques aided us in getting the most out of a business conversation.

From a more pragmatic perspective, knowing a little about everything is way to reduce your dependency on others. If you know a little about carpentry, you can know enough to ensure that your contractor isn’t ripping you off when you get new cabinets. If you knew just a little about what was involved, you might even be able to do it yourself.

And with the internet it is possible to know a lot about a lot. Information is at your fingertips. You don’t have to remember everything you learn; you just need to know enough for a search query to find out more. The internet has meant that people with a burning curiosity to learn anything can.

But what worries me most about the sentiment that being a jack of all trades is a negative thing is that it breeds a futilism, the idea that because I may not be an expert I can’t make a valuable contribution to a field other than my expertise. By simply “leaving everything else to everyone else” you are entrusting your destiny to others. That is a scary thought.

Sure, you may not know enough about a subject to do a task completely by yourself, but that is no excuse for inactivity. If you are educated enough to know about things even in general terms, you are prepared to make a difference or to find someone who can help you.

Now more than ever, there is no reason not to be knowledgable about a wide range of subjects. The ideal of the Renaissance Man should be heralded, not dismissed. Obviously, we can’t be an experts at everything, but that’s not an excuse for not trying.

I leave you with this quote from Mark Twain, which I think applies here:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 8:34 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.