Generalist vs Specialist

Over the years I’ve had conflicting opinions about being a generalist vs being a specialist.

I’ve sometimes given myself a hard time, as I’ve always been a jack of all trades and a master of none. My whole life, I’ve never excelled at one particular thing, but I’ve been pretty good or really good at a lot of things.

I feel like the education system—at least what I have experienced in the UK—tries to force people into a specialism. If you're optimising for employment, this makes perfect sense. You want to be the absolute best at a very specific high-value skill so that you can outcompete the rest of the employment market in your domain.

However, if you are optimising for entrepreneurship or the startup environment, I think being a really good generalist is almost certainly the best path forward. The ability to wear many hats and understand the full gamut of skills necessary to create a company from scratch and operate it successfully is almost certainly incredibly important. I say this having never run a successful company before, but it logically makes sense that the best generalists would be the best founders/CEOs.

So, I’m no longer going to give myself any stick about this. I’m proud to be a generalist, and I know that it’s going to be important for my path in life.