"Jack of all trades, Master of None"

In my last post, I admitted that my career has meandered at times.  I would even go further and say that I have reinvented my career at least once, if not twice, as my professional interests have changed over the years.  I have never been 100% comfortable recommending this particular path to younger physicians.  Instead, I have often led these mentor/mentee conversations by asking, "Where do you want to be in your career five years from now?"  It's as if I am recommending that younger physicians map out their careers more rigorously than I did. 

I recently read a great book by the author David Epstein called, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.  It's really a great book, and it definitely changed my mind on the kind of career planning advice that I will give in the future.  The book focuses on the particularly germane argument - is it better to be a generalist or a specialist?  You've probably heard that old saying that labels anyone claiming to be a generalist as a "Jack of all trades, Master of none."  I've even used it myself to describe my own career at times.  Most of the time that this particular phrase is used, it is not meant to be a compliment.  However, did you know that there's a second part of this old proverb?  The complete saying is actually, "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one."  The complete saying actually is suggesting that being a generalist is not such a bad thing after all.

Epstein provides all kinds of evidence suggesting that being good at many things is better than being great at just one thing.  He starts out his book contrasting the careers of two professional athletes - the golfer, Tiger Woods and the tennis player, Roger Federer.  Tiger will likely finish his career as one of the greatest golfers to ever play the game - the same is true for Roger.  Importantly, Tiger started playing golf at a very early age (around the age of 2 years) and played nothing else.  Roger played a number of different sports before focusing on tennis relatively late in life (at least for most professional tennis players).  Tiger was a specialist from the beginning, while Roger, a generalist, developed his athleticism playing a variety of different sports.  Both ultimately found incredible success in their respective sports, but they clearly didn't get there in the same way. 

I know what you are thinking.  It sounds like Epstein doesn't necessarily believe in the infamous 10,000 hour rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell (I've posted a few times on Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule - see "Practice makes better, but does Practice make perfect?" and "Premeditated, purposeful, intentionally-focused training").  As a matter of fact, Epstein and Gladwell debateddebated this very topic following Epstein's first book, The Sports Gene.  I wouldn't necessarily throw out the "10,000 hour rule" just yet, but I do think that Epstein makes a compelling case that perhaps we (as most of us are not elite athletes) should focus on being the best person that we can be - almost everything that we learn makes us better, and almost everything that we learn makes us better in whatever profession we happen to be working.

Epstein mentions something known as the The Dark Horse Project, which I found both interesting and reassuring.  The Dark Horse Project is a research study being conducted by a group of investigators at Harvard whose sole objective is to determine how men and women develop expertise in their chosen fields.  So far, what they have found supports Epstein's argument.  In other words, there are many, many individuals who, like both Roger Federer and me (this is the one and only time that I get to compare myself to Roger Federer) followed a different, at times even meandering path, before finally settling in one particular field or area of expertise. 

The computer scientist, entrepreneur, author, and venture capitalist, Paul Graham once wrote a high school commencement speech that he never ultimately gave - it can be found on the Internet (see "What You'll Wish You'd Known").  In the speech, Graham provides the following advice, which I believe provides a good closure to this post:

Instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations.  This is what most successful people actually do anyway. 

In the graduation-speech approach, you decide where you want to be in twenty years, and then ask: what should I do now to get there?  I propose instead that you don't commit to anything in the future, but just look at the options available now, and choose those that will give you the most promising range of options afterward.

It's not so important what you work on, so long as you're not wasting your time.  Work on things that interest you and increase your options, and worry later about which you'll take.

It's really great advice, when you think about it in the context of everything that David Epstein has said.  Being a "Jack of all trades" isn't such a bad thing after all.  In fact, it may be the best way to get where you are going.