Related: Career advice from Scott Adams (Dilbert’s creator) suggests becoming “very good (top 25%) at two or more things.” (He even goes on to suggest: “At least one of the skills in your mixture should involve communication, either written or verbal. ”)
Being a translator is often a natural outcome of this; when you have two or more mental spaces to pick ideas and metaphors from, it becomes easier to describe complex things in one field without resorting to jargon, using the language of a different field. Trying to be a translator can also be useful to clarify your own understanding, for this reason—you can’t hide behind jargon or “common knowledge” beliefs any more, and so have to go through, clarify, and perhaps reconstruct your mental models for what you’re trying to translate.
Related: Career advice from Scott Adams (Dilbert’s creator) suggests becoming “very good (top 25%) at two or more things.” (He even goes on to suggest: “At least one of the skills in your mixture should involve communication, either written or verbal. ”)
Being a translator is often a natural outcome of this; when you have two or more mental spaces to pick ideas and metaphors from, it becomes easier to describe complex things in one field without resorting to jargon, using the language of a different field. Trying to be a translator can also be useful to clarify your own understanding, for this reason—you can’t hide behind jargon or “common knowledge” beliefs any more, and so have to go through, clarify, and perhaps reconstruct your mental models for what you’re trying to translate.