Is there a place for generalists in the world?
Let’s admit, we like experts. We like 100%ers. We want a doctor who spends all their free time researching doctor things. We want a tax accountant who only reads financial news and tax law. We want a software engineer whose idea of leisure is practicing coding challenges on Leetcode for hours. When we were little kids, we thought our teachers lived at school—what a comforting thought, that someone’s entire life is dedicated to helping you with that one thing!
And in many cases, that’s basically how it works. One person spends her life as an expert in medicine, and another spends his life as an expert mechanic. They talk to each other, and now each of them gets to enjoy two lives’ worth of expertise (in health and cars) over a single lifetime. Multiply that out—how many actions do you take each day that were influenced by an expert, a researcher, a mentor, a specialist? How many man-hours of human excellence went into you being able to walk up to a counter and order a sandwich? So let’s be clear, specialization is a skill multiplier of unimaginable proportions, and the modern world wouldn’t exist without it. From the best-spear-sharpener of the tribe to the lead engineer at a nuclear power plant, specialists have always found straightforward ways to improve civilization and have reaped status, goods, or money in return.
But there have always been generalists, too. Throughout history they’ve been called homines universales (universal men), polymaths, renaissance men. They’ve been the groundbreaking artists, the world-changing inventors, the revolutionary thinkers. The modern world wouldn’t exist without them, either.
Fertile ground
But not every society, and certainly not every socioeconomic class, has been fertile ground for generalists. What would an abundantly curious immigrant do in depression-era New York, where the only way to make any money is working 14-hour shifts at a textile mill? Or how would one even develop new curiosities, if they’re a poor serf in medieval England who can’t travel and doesn’t know how to read?
If you were born into an inconvenient time, place, or class, you wouldn’t thrive as generalist. You’d probably take up a trade (a specialty), do it as much as necessary to survive, and confine your curiosities to the life of your imagination. Generalism requires slack: room for exploration with uncertain reward. Conversely, in the times/places/classes of abundance throughout history, we often see cultures idolizing multidisciplinary expertise as the ideal way to live. I’ll explore this more deeply in a “history of generalists” post in the future.
The reason I say all this is because I believe we are in a place of abundance. We are on the cutting edge of human flourishing, but we often act like we’re not. The reasons for this are out of scope, but I think it has to do with efficient consumerism sucking up all our non-work time, increased connectedness making social status more competitive, and our culture losing its reverence for excellence as an end in itself. Regardless, we act like we need to specialize, like society is so rigid that we must pick a tried-and-true path to survive. Meanwhile it has never been easier to invest in side projects, try new things, solve new problems!
The generalist life
I also want to elaborate on how generalism can make life easier in the modern world. This is not to convince you to become a generalist. Rather it’s to convince you, if you already have that tendency, that we are living in one of those rare times, perfect for multi-talented people to thrive—maybe the best of such times.
- In the modern world, we are already necessary generalists over a few specific areas. Our world is multicultural and complex—there’s no longer a single life-path you can follow for reliable success. That means individuals need to be prepared to navigate a handful of new challenges themselves. Even the purest specialists are forced to keep up their knowledge and skills in certain areas; some things just aren’t easy to outsource to an expert.
- Being a generalist is a way to use “all the levers” available to you, in terms of your choices between the different lives you could live in the modern world. You have more choices than even the emperors and kings of other ages had. And you can keep more of those paths open for longer by developing your different skills concurrently. You start getting into a new skill, gain some competence, and then you can sit on that potential for as long as you want. You wait until the right opportunity comes up, investing in other skills in the meantime. This way, you keep many doors open, increasing your chances of a lucky break.
- For example, I can play drums—I could play in a casual band someday. I make digital art and understand NFTs—that could place me in a crypto startup someday. Some other things I’ve worked on have already paid off in tangible ways: I can write and use WordPress—now I’m doing some freelancing work to help a small company onboard new customers.
- In a hyperconnected and hypercompetitive world, being a generalist allows you to avoid efficient competition (post coming soon). The more unique your combination of skills, the less competition there’ll be for it. This lets you live in a more comfortable niche. Efficient competition is the opposite of slack, and it can choke out a lot of what makes life worth living.
Talk of revolution?
Generalists are positioned to change the world, but that’s not a requirement.
It’s true that historically, many of the people who moved humanity forward with great new technologies or original ideas were generalists. Most startup founders and CEOs are generalists, as are most inventors. Many of the most influential writers and philosophers have been people who had unusually varied life experiences. Art is dominated by specialists, but new media and new methods come from generalists connecting contexts in unique ways.
All this can be daunting. There’s no clear blueprint for living as a generalist, and there’s certainly no blueprint for inventing the next big thing. It’s not the kind of thing you just sit down and work on. Therefore I don’t find it helpful to dwell on the “generalists are inventors!”/”generalists are CEOs!” angle. Generalists are valuable to society even outside of grand novel achievements. They’re able to draw connections between people and scenes that wouldn’t otherwise interact, and that kind of connection is a good in itself. On some level, it’s necessary for society to function at all. In my own big-tech career, for example, I see how vital it is to have at least a few managers who truly understand engineering, a few engineers who truly understand design, and so on.
That being said, if you or I are going to invent the next big thing, it’s probably going to come after a long series of other ideas that we sincerely tried. We all want to be “inspired” with an immediate home run of an idea, but being ready for inspiration, being worthy of it, is our own responsibility. The generalists who do great things are the ones who stay active, continually putting work into the things that spark their interest. Being a generalist can easily become an excuse to avoid engaging with the world, but True Generalists do the opposite.