Generalist vs Specialist

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Auroobo, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? When you first start learning about writing and start looking up advice from other writers, there is an idea that comes across very quickly, thatmost people will probably –

[00:00:29] Probably have heard many times that if you want to write, you have to go out and you have to experience life. You need knowledge in lots of other things before you can become a good writer, because what else are you gonna bring to your writing? You can't really be a good writer, who wants to write about a lot of different things or about the world Or create a, create a world, even a fictional one if you don't have experience in the [00:01:00] world, you know?

[00:01:03] And that brings me to the idea of a generalized specialist, which is what I identify with, cuz this is something I've been thinking about a little bit recently. There are the jack of all trades: generally competent in a lot of different areas. And then there are the specialists: who have developed a core competency in one very large area and know everything about it or a lot about it very deeply.

[00:01:35] And when you think about it, I think it seems like the "right" thing is to become a specialist. And in our world we often pay specialists a lot. You know, the doctors, the engineers, um, the professors, maybe some professors? I actually don't know how much [00:02:00] professors make, but you know what I mean.

[00:02:04] But I actually think that as far as advantages go, especially for myself, with my own nature, being a generalized specialist is far more interesting and rewarding. So what does it mean to be a generalized specialist? I mean that there is one area that you know a lot about, but that you also know a little bit or maybe more than a little about a lot of other spheres of

[00:02:39] information or experience. I think one of the easiest examples to give of this would be Da Vinci, who was an artist, but he dabbled in, you know, engineering and botany and [00:03:00] history and math, and he didn't just dabble. Dabble is actually a really bad word for it; he delved into them, not as much as he did in art, like in the paintings and that kind of thing, but he did.

[00:03:17] He would go deeper than just having a cursory knowledge of it and experiment and create and learn and seek out more information in these other areas of information as well. And all of this, all of it comes through in this paintings, all of it comes through and is informing his art. Interdisciplinary knowledge is very powerful that way because concepts are not usually isolated to one area of information, and they usually lend themselves in different ways to other industries and other [00:04:00] areas of work, for example.

[00:04:03] And when you know a little. Or maybe a little more than, just a little bit about a lot of different things. you're able to see those connections quicker. You're able to learn things a little quicker. You're able to figure stuff out and adapt better, but you still need a specialty where you're applying all of these insights that you're gathering from the other interdisciplinary knowledge you have found and learned

[00:04:33] in your life. So are you a specialist, a generalized specialist, or a generalist?

[00:04:45] Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.