The “jack of all trades” identity motivates me to practice learning new things and overcome the aversion to being a beginner, which is a useful meta-skill. I have indeed observed a “master of none” effect, where I’m average at singing, dancing, rock climbing, etc, but not amazing at any of them. For practical purposes of sharing hobbies with friends and challenging myself, being at that level for each skill is quite sufficient.
I agree about the usefulness of T-shaped expertise, and this identity helps me form the crossbar of the T. In my field (statistics), having a broad knowledge of the basics for different methods and applications is especially helpful, and I think this is true of many other domains as well.
The “jack of all trades” identity may be a little idiosyncratic to me, though. It’s related to the “universal curiosity” one—I seem to have a terminal goal of building a complete model of the world and being able to do anything I think is worthwhile (this is an unachievable goal that I nevertheless try to inch towards).
The “jack of all trades” identity motivates me to practice learning new things and overcome the aversion to being a beginner, which is a useful meta-skill. I have indeed observed a “master of none” effect, where I’m average at singing, dancing, rock climbing, etc, but not amazing at any of them. For practical purposes of sharing hobbies with friends and challenging myself, being at that level for each skill is quite sufficient.
I agree about the usefulness of T-shaped expertise, and this identity helps me form the crossbar of the T. In my field (statistics), having a broad knowledge of the basics for different methods and applications is especially helpful, and I think this is true of many other domains as well.
The “jack of all trades” identity may be a little idiosyncratic to me, though. It’s related to the “universal curiosity” one—I seem to have a terminal goal of building a complete model of the world and being able to do anything I think is worthwhile (this is an unachievable goal that I nevertheless try to inch towards).