Read a couple of books by Barbara sher:
Refuse to choose [0]
She calls people like us "Scanners" and claims that our diversity of interests is not a weakness, but a strength. Then goes on techniques to make this skill work for us.
She calls people like us "Scanners" and claims that our diversity of interests is not a weakness, but a strength. Then goes on techniques to make this skill work for us.
Ex: OP wants to read "textbooks to learn basic concepts" and "swim in their ideas". That doesn't equal competence.
However, if you have strong expertise in a particular field and can find a way to utilize the ideas/learnings from a different field you're interested in then it might be useful. Big if though.
Single-field people tend to be hilariously bad at diffuse reasoning relative to what you'd expect from a person that competent.
No one is going to pat you on the head for learning the basics of a field 10x faster than someone else because the basics have very little value by themselves.
I say all of this as someone who is very curious and likes learning about new things.
A big part of being good at something is really mastering the fundamentals. I tend to think it's possible to turn 'master the fundamentals' into a kind of transferable skill.
Another big part of mastery is pattern recognition, which develops from sheer experience. To some extent, learning to recognize important types of patterns is also a transferable skill.
A luthier that can play guitar will make a better guitar, most likely.
Edit: Someone else said it better here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30928437
Think back to college, to your friends who actually got degrees in various specialties. How many of them actually closely read even five of the books in the curriculum, took detailed notes, and thoroughly understood the material?
A motivated autodidact can do that in a couple months (about how long I manage to stay interested in any one topic). Understanding that 20% of the knowledge in the field really does tend to make you 80% "competent." I find that I can have "competent amateur"-level conversations with specialists in a subject after just that much effort.
From there, it's all a question of whether you want to move toward expertise. Becoming an expert takes MUCH more time, energy, and effort.
What normally happens for me is that, after reaching the level of competence on a broad subject, I may come across a subspecialty or two that inspire me to reach competence on them. That's the layer deeper.
That doesn't usually happen right after the broad review. It usually happens a few cycles later, but because I engaged the material and made notes on it, I can refresh what I knew from my overview and be prepared to dive deeper.
It opens up interesting conversations (I know something about an incredible variety of things, so can usually engage someone in a conversation about something that matters to them). It allows me to connect ideas that make me seem "creative" in any one particular field.
In other words it's a very engaging, fun way to live! And not nearly as daunting a thing as it seems if you mistake building expertise with building competence.
Being a polymath is just really good fun if you let it be!
How it this a problem? It is just another way.
As a dev with 10 years experience and a masters who has not been allowed to specialize due to language/stack/project/product context switching, I can anecdotally say that generalists are not valued and that this breadth of learning generally prevents specialization. I am only a midlevel and make under $100k in a moderate-high COL area.
I think people hiring employees frequently don't realize that they need generalists and instead act like they are hiring permanent contractors.
The conversation began with the OP talking about wide cross-disciplinary pursuits.
"A couple of years back I started dabbling in the social sciences and humanities (my background is in ecology / evolutionary biology), and became interested in one discipline after another. From psychology to history of science to anthropology and sociology, to economics and politics, to philosophy and religious studies and cultural studies, etc."
My post was a reply to a response to "Refuse to Choose" and the concept of a "Scanner", someone who is looking at many different disciplines that do not all immediately relate to one another.
And my original post was to the effect of "Yes, being a scanner is a weakness if you can't synthesize your cross disciplinary knowledge into extremely valuable non-obvious insights and/or awe-inspiring products".
Basically, think of ideas as being distanced apart from each other. Some of them are in your head, others in mine, some are in a book, or a movie. If we are specialists working together on a project, then to access and synthesize ideas that exist in both our heads we need to have a meeting, which takes significant time. To access it from media, we're going to need to consume media and study, which takes even more time. A helpful analogy would be the memory hierarchy if you know a bit about computer architecture.
But, if many different ideas exist already, only in one person's head, no meetings are needed. They can just work, synthesizing as they go. That is where the "Scanner" emerges from their cocoon and inverts what has been up to then a weakness sapping the ability to excel in one field, instead becoming what one might call "A Renaissance Man".
95% of the time you'll be greeted with a "huh...interesting" and no follow up, but in my experience that remaining 5% can be pretty awesome when you stumble upon something that solves a problem in a way nobody else imagined.
That sounds great, but it also sounds rare and potentially low paid.
When it comes to the job market I think it's important, for those of us who are generalists, to NOT attempt to compete in fields where there are massive numbers of candidates all aiming for the same kinds of jobs. In any "hot career track" one would be competing against others who are much more narrowly focused. There's always going to be someone who is more capable and has gained more achievement in any particular activity "silo".
Ironically, generalists do much better in niche jobs where they can apply peculiar combinations of skills. The hard part is these jobs are hard to find, and worse, the situation can be miserable for generalists early in their career.
It could be genetic too my Mom's sister's children are all doctors but one of them or some of them don't use their degrees and work manual labour jobs. Maybe I have that but to a lesser degree due to procrastination and my environment.
Would love for you to take a look if you don't mind :)
ADHD doesn't necessarily present as "hyperactive child" or the other stereotypes to which it often gets associated. Many people receive an ADHD diagnosis in adulthood after years of (more or less) successfully coping by employing organizational strategies, e.g. good list-making, appointment reminders, setting extra alarms, and so on.
In terms of OP's rotating interests, the colloquial term is "hyper-focus" and it occurs because people with ADHD are dopamine deficient and generally crave novelty. That can lead to both regressive behaviors like substance abuse or more progressive behaviors like adopting new hobbies and interests.
For the latter, it's easy to get quick dopamine hits when you first dive into a new subject/hobby. But as time goes on and you dive deeper into it, the novelty you first experienced begins to wear off. The quickest antidote is to find a new fixation and start the process over again.
I've experienced this phenomenon many times myself, and much of what OP described resonates with my experiences.
> ADHD doesn't necessarily present as "hyperactive child" or the other stereotypes to which it often gets associated. Many people receive an ADHD diagnosis in adulthood after years of (more or less) successfully coping by employing organizational strategies.
That's pretty much been my case so far :') (though yet undiagnosed, only suspected).
It's not necessary to know that you have ADD/ADHD to tackle these issues, but it gives you a good idea of what's going on.
Would love your input! :)
Hope you can contribute! :)
I have been lucky enough to turn my passion into a successful software career working for someone else but I’ve always wanted to be self employed.
Then there are some who are able to manage their schedules and pursue multiple interests at the same time.
There might be more types of scanners that I cannot recall but another type was scanners with one core interest and then various interests around it. This is what works for me, programming is my core interest and luckily pays well to let me pursue my other hobbies. Over years, I have had various hobbies and learned so many things. I feel I can find a common hobby/interest with almost anyone now.