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I think this is a fallacy, its true that becoming 90th% in a few different fields would render you quite the unicorn. The issue is that its common for there to

I think this is a fallacy, its true that becoming 90th% in a few different fields would render you quite the unicorn. The issue is that its common for there to be very low demand for such an overlap of skill sets. Also, how would you leverage such an overlap? These positions and opportunities do not just appear as you are qualified, the job market is extremely inefficient, and not very good at correctly pricing ability. Whats more, being the best in the world at something generally makes that skill very recognizable to others. You are a standout and ascend extremely quickly. I would argue the true best strategy is to shoot for best in your city or country/world at some nascent niche skill. As an addition, this kind of article is part of a group of articles aimed at seeming to be a "novel" or "clever" approach to life, somehow holding the key to outsmart others. Most likely it a complete waste of your five minutes. Its similar to thinking about the Dunning Kruger effect, a complete waste of time.

spiderfarmer 7y ago
I’m a generalist and it works for me in my one man company. In my previous company I hired specialists, not generalists, because the specialists did not suffer from distractions as much as generalists did. They also didn’t question everything a specialist in another area did. It’s also easier to build teams that way.
- codingslave 7y ago
  True, but is your level of success similar to the level of success of someone who is the best in the world at something?
  - agota 7y ago
    That's a good point. However, I think the question is how likely it is that you would be able to become the best in the world at something? I think that people who are the best in the world at something tend to be genetic freaks. Are you one? Probably not. In that case, attempting to become the best in the world might mean setting yourself up for failure, though presumably you would still be more successful than an average person. It's just that there's a massive difference between being in the top 10% and the top 1% in terms of reward.
    - cgufus 7y ago
      I guess people being at the 99 percentile of one specialized thing probably are better compensated (with respect to salary) than people being at 99 percentile of their array of skills. However, maybe for the latter, also compensation is an array consisting of work-life-balance elements like sports, free-time, hobbies, happiness on the job and family life aside from pure monetary compensation.
      - agota 7y ago
        I think that's definitely something to consider. In theory, everyone would love to be the best in the world at something, but in practice, how many people would want to live a life required to achieve that?
  - spiderfarmer 7y ago
    Probably not, but the author thinks that as a generalist your changes of succes are higher, not the level of success.
joecot 7y ago
> The issue is that its common for there to be very low demand for such an overlap of skill sets. Also, how would you leverage such an overlap? The only overlap they really gave in the examples was "They're good at X skill.... and marketing themselves." Literally, the example people were good at both a skill and then marketing themselves as being good at that skill. Gary Vaynerchuk is both a good writer and good at marketing himself. Steve Jobs was good at design and also marketing himself. Tomas Pueyo is apparently decent at engineering and also ... marketing himself, with articles and TED talks like this. This is also why people can name Neil deGrasse Tyson but probably not a single other living astrophysicist. He's not the best in the world, but he's the best astrophysicist in the world at marketing himself. So the advice isn't really to be good at two different skills. The advice is to be pretty good at one skill and then be really good at marketing yourself as being good at that thing. Even though other people in the world will be better at it, if you're good at marketing yourself you'll still be in more demand.
- agota 7y ago
  I think that's a great observation. One exception I can think of where you legitimately need to be decent at three skills is bootstrapping as a solopreneur. You need to be able to code, design, and market your product. Other than that, it does seem like "X + marketing" is what you need, though I guess "marketing" is an umbrella term (content marketing requires writing ability, public speaking requires public speaking ability, etc.).
  - joecot 7y ago
    Sure, and I'm sure there are actual cases where being good at 2 different skills (not one of which being some form of marketing yourself) is relevant. Devops pretty much requires being good at both development and server administration. You're correct that bootstrapping requires multiple different skills, including some amount of business sense. There are many cases where having multiple different skills could make you the best in the world at that combo. But those correlations aren't random -- so lots of different people will be trying to be the best at the same set of skills as you, since they're connected as requirements -- and despite the article's premise, that's not the case the author's examples make. The article really just makes it clear it's important to be able to market yourself. However "people able to market their skills achieve more than people who can't" is not as interesting an article premise as "How to Become the Best in the World at Something (by being good at multiple skills)". And the author went with the latter because, well, it's important to be able to market yourself well.
guerrilla 7y ago
> Its similar to thinking about the Dunning Kruger effect, a complete waste of time. What do you mean by this and how do you justify such a statement?
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  I can't speak for the OP, but Dunning-Kruger does seem pretty useless as a practical matter. Maybe it tells you why you see so many overconfident dumb people. Maybe you realize it's more useful as a warning to you for thinking you are the smart one in the equation. Either way, it doesn't really offer anything actionable.
  - thisisbrians 7y ago
    I disagree. Understanding fundamentally how and why people can be overconfident is very useful when interacting with others, especially in a professional setting or anywhere else that politics are involved: frequently, overconfidence (especially when unchallenged) is rewarded — for instance, in interview processes. Having a name for the mechanism at play is useful for assessing and communicating about such situations.
  - guerrilla 7y ago
    Seems pretty actionable to me. For one, informing people of it alone can give them insight into their overconfidence if they are able to be mindful of it.
imgabe 7y ago
It's a regurgitation of something Scott Adams (Dilbert cartoonist) has said for years. In Adams' case his example is that he wasn't the greatest artist in the world, he wasn't the funniest joke writer in the world, but he was ok at both and combined they made a cartoon that was very successful. I guess you could just look at "cartooning" as a single skill in itself, but that's the idea.
jugjug 7y ago
To me the article is very helpful. I aim to be in the global top 10-20% for the following areas: engineering, movement (functional capabilities of my body), martial arts (BJJ, maybe later MMA), nutrition, inner practice & discovering the nature of consciousness, art of learning and presenting. Combining engineering with one or two areas might be an interesting opportunity. The pool of software engineers who e.g. also do martial arts, or are interested in meditation or the process of learning seems globally large enough to support possible well-executed business. Regarding marketing, I start to gravitate more towards experts who provide long-form content. For example, Ray Peat in nutrition [1] or John Danaher in BJJ [2]. This might be another marketing approach - no marketing at all, just providing high-quality long-form content, with no social media. It might attract people who think in a similar way as me. [1] http://raypeat.com/ http://raypeat.com/ [2] https://bjjfanatics.com/products/back-attacks-enter-the-system-by-john-danaher https://bjjfanatics.com/products/back-attacks-enter-the-syst...
friendlybus 7y ago
These articles about generalists are a trend. You'll see it morph into a focus on quantity in a few years. Both single focus quality and broad generalist work.

spiderfarmer 7y ago

I’m a generalist and it works for me in my one man company. In my previous company I hired specialists, not generalists, because the specialists did not suffer from distractions as much as generalists did. They also didn’t question everything a specialist in another area did. It’s also easier to build teams that way.

codingslave 7y ago
True, but is your level of success similar to the level of success of someone who is the best in the world at something?
- agota 7y ago
  That's a good point. However, I think the question is how likely it is that you would be able to become the best in the world at something? I think that people who are the best in the world at something tend to be genetic freaks. Are you one? Probably not. In that case, attempting to become the best in the world might mean setting yourself up for failure, though presumably you would still be more successful than an average person. It's just that there's a massive difference between being in the top 10% and the top 1% in terms of reward.
  - cgufus 7y ago
    I guess people being at the 99 percentile of one specialized thing probably are better compensated (with respect to salary) than people being at 99 percentile of their array of skills. However, maybe for the latter, also compensation is an array consisting of work-life-balance elements like sports, free-time, hobbies, happiness on the job and family life aside from pure monetary compensation.
    - agota 7y ago
      I think that's definitely something to consider. In theory, everyone would love to be the best in the world at something, but in practice, how many people would want to live a life required to achieve that?
- spiderfarmer 7y ago
  Probably not, but the author thinks that as a generalist your changes of succes are higher, not the level of success.

joecot 7y ago

> The issue is that its common for there to be very low demand for such an overlap of skill sets. Also, how would you leverage such an overlap? The only overlap they really gave in the examples was "They're good at X skill.... and marketing themselves." Literally, the example people were good at both a skill and then marketing themselves as being good at that skill. Gary Vaynerchuk is both a good writer and good at marketing himself. Steve Jobs was good at design and also marketing himself. Tomas Pueyo is apparently decent at engineering and also ... marketing himself, with articles and TED talks like this. This is also why people can name Neil deGrasse Tyson but probably not a single other living astrophysicist. He's not the best in the world, but he's the best astrophysicist in the world at marketing himself. So the advice isn't really to be good at two different skills. The advice is to be pretty good at one skill and then be really good at marketing yourself as being good at that thing. Even though other people in the world will be better at it, if you're good at marketing yourself you'll still be in more demand.

agota 7y ago
I think that's a great observation. One exception I can think of where you legitimately need to be decent at three skills is bootstrapping as a solopreneur. You need to be able to code, design, and market your product. Other than that, it does seem like "X + marketing" is what you need, though I guess "marketing" is an umbrella term (content marketing requires writing ability, public speaking requires public speaking ability, etc.).
- joecot 7y ago
  Sure, and I'm sure there are actual cases where being good at 2 different skills (not one of which being some form of marketing yourself) is relevant. Devops pretty much requires being good at both development and server administration. You're correct that bootstrapping requires multiple different skills, including some amount of business sense. There are many cases where having multiple different skills could make you the best in the world at that combo. But those correlations aren't random -- so lots of different people will be trying to be the best at the same set of skills as you, since they're connected as requirements -- and despite the article's premise, that's not the case the author's examples make. The article really just makes it clear it's important to be able to market yourself. However "people able to market their skills achieve more than people who can't" is not as interesting an article premise as "How to Become the Best in the World at Something (by being good at multiple skills)". And the author went with the latter because, well, it's important to be able to market yourself well.

guerrilla 7y ago

> Its similar to thinking about the Dunning Kruger effect, a complete waste of time. What do you mean by this and how do you justify such a statement?

rootusrootus 7y ago
I can't speak for the OP, but Dunning-Kruger does seem pretty useless as a practical matter. Maybe it tells you why you see so many overconfident dumb people. Maybe you realize it's more useful as a warning to you for thinking you are the smart one in the equation. Either way, it doesn't really offer anything actionable.
- thisisbrians 7y ago
  I disagree. Understanding fundamentally how and why people can be overconfident is very useful when interacting with others, especially in a professional setting or anywhere else that politics are involved: frequently, overconfidence (especially when unchallenged) is rewarded — for instance, in interview processes. Having a name for the mechanism at play is useful for assessing and communicating about such situations.
- guerrilla 7y ago
  Seems pretty actionable to me. For one, informing people of it alone can give them insight into their overconfidence if they are able to be mindful of it.

imgabe 7y ago

It's a regurgitation of something Scott Adams (Dilbert cartoonist) has said for years. In Adams' case his example is that he wasn't the greatest artist in the world, he wasn't the funniest joke writer in the world, but he was ok at both and combined they made a cartoon that was very successful. I guess you could just look at "cartooning" as a single skill in itself, but that's the idea.

jugjug 7y ago

To me the article is very helpful. I aim to be in the global top 10-20% for the following areas: engineering, movement (functional capabilities of my body), martial arts (BJJ, maybe later MMA), nutrition, inner practice & discovering the nature of consciousness, art of learning and presenting. Combining engineering with one or two areas might be an interesting opportunity. The pool of software engineers who e.g. also do martial arts, or are interested in meditation or the process of learning seems globally large enough to support possible well-executed business. Regarding marketing, I start to gravitate more towards experts who provide long-form content. For example, Ray Peat in nutrition [1] or John Danaher in BJJ [2]. This might be another marketing approach - no marketing at all, just providing high-quality long-form content, with no social media. It might attract people who think in a similar way as me. [1] http://raypeat.com/ http://raypeat.com/ [2] https://bjjfanatics.com/products/back-attacks-enter-the-system-by-john-danaher https://bjjfanatics.com/products/back-attacks-enter-the-syst...

friendlybus 7y ago

These articles about generalists are a trend. You'll see it morph into a focus on quantity in a few years. Both single focus quality and broad generalist work.