GeekBone
What You Should Expect From This Blog
Recently I watched a TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson called How Schools Kill Creativity. If you have not seen it, I would encourage you to do so. Sir Robinson talks about how we are taught from an early age to focus on things like math and reading. Most parents tell children they have to study and work hard. They should grow up to be doctors or lawyers. Adults rarely encourage children to become an artist or a dancer. His point is that not everyone is a doctor or a lawyer. Not everyone is going to make a good accountant or a banker. Not everyone should go to college. Everyone is different and we need to think about education differently and we need to embrace the diversity of people. There is a link to this talk at the end of this article.
Jack of all Trades – Master of None
This really spoke to me. Most of my life I have never really known what it is I wanted to do with my life. When I was a kid, I loved all kinds of sports and I was good at a lot of them but I was never the best player on the team. I would practice hard on my own for hours at a time. Interestingly I would only practice to the point where I became good enough to play. I never wanted to became an expert at any of it. I got into chess for a while as a kid and I was pretty good. After competing in High School and spending hours reading books on chess, I just sort of stopped. When I got older, I took some programming courses, but I never did anything with this knowledge.
I could go on and on with examples like this. Photography, acting, engine mechanics, the medical field, writing, accounting, carpentry, fishing, cooking, electrical; the list goes on and on. Yet I have never found the one thing that could capture my attention and never let it go.
I read stories of all of successful people who have known what they wanted to do from an early age. This passion and this focus has always eluded me. Society has taught me that because I do not have a specific degree or a specific skill set, I am not as valuable to society as someone who is. As a result I have hidden in the background afraid to be proud of who I am.
The Generalist
This leads me to the blog posting my wife sent me. It was written by the king of bloggers, Tim Ferriss, the author of the 4 Hour Work Week. It is called The Top 5 Reasons to be a Jack of all Trades and you can find the link to this blog post at the end of this post as well.
Ferris’s point was to embrace being a Jack of All Trades. He referred to it as being a generalist and he gave examples like Steve Jobs and other CEOs. One example I can speak to with firsthand knowledge is George Bodenhiemer. He was the President of ESPN and was responsible for most of the growth of ESPN during the late 90s and early 2000’s. His biggest claim to fame was negotiating moving Monday Night Football to ESPN. He also merged ABC sports into ESPN. Believe it or not, Bodenhiemer started in the mailroom as a driver. He worked his way up through marketing, affiliate and ad sales, and research before becoming the president of ESPN. Bodenhiemer was not the best at any one thing. He gained well-rounded knowledge and was willing to embrace and learn new things. This helped propel him to the top.
At the end of his article, Ferriss takes a quote from the book Tuxedo Park, about one of the world’s greatest generalist, Alfred Lee Loomis who helped change the course of World War II.
Loomis did not conform to the conventional measure of a great scientist. He was too complex to categorize a financier, philanthropist, society figure, physicist, inventor, amateur, dilettante a contradiction in terms.
What to Expect
So what does all of this mean? It means you should expect randomness in this blog. You will notice a variety of sections. These will change as time goes on but you are welcome to join me on this journey of organized randomness.