Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Focus in

I've been having some thoughts lately, about my career goals. I've been doing something that college students do--jump from one major to another without really choosing one. I'm doing this with my skillset. I know some will say that it's nice to be a "jack-of-all-trades," but actually trying to become so makes you just that, a jack. First, people don't take you too seriously, and second, you waste a lot of time bouncing from one skillset to the next. Meanwhile, your peers become ever more qualified, marketable, smarter, etc. in their chosen field.

Everyone knows the that "guy" in every company who does everything. He'll design, write code, manage the server, do email marketing, online marketing. This guy is the "super soldier," and though he may be pretty good at most of those things, he'll inevitably fall behind in one or more areas. That "guy" was me at one company and in some respects, it was nice. I had people coming to me from every department asking me to do such and such.

It's time to focus. It's time to become a guru. That doesn't mean I'll leave my interest in other areas behind, I'll just have to turn them into hobbies.

Now for the hard part... deciding what I'm going to do. I'll get back to you on that.

... and this is me atop San Marino. The End. 

2 comments:

  1. Mmm...very insightful. Don't feel too bad, though. All the knowledge and skills you've amassed so far are simply going to make you that much more awesome when you do narrow down. I just barely started focusing in on one industry about a year ago. And I've spent the last year trying different job types within that industry. I think I'm just beginning to settle into a few specific things I'm really passionate about. I don't think I would have ever recognized that process for what it is if I hadn't read this post.

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  2. Someone once told me that difference between a specialist and a generalist is that a generalist knows practically nothing about everything and a specialist knows everything about practically nothing.

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