[HN Gopher] Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my...
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Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't
be enough
If you are this kind, how do you decide which things to work on?
Author : kbns
Score : 286 points
Date : 2022-08-28 14:10 UTC (8 hours ago)
| greenthrow wrote:
| Prioritize. Pick one thing and start there.
|
| I'd also ask yourself "Why do I want to be an expert
| specifcially?" Is this really just a manifestation of narcissism?
| Are you really after admiration and respect? Work on yourself.
| That's the best advice I can give you.
| screye wrote:
| Sometimes being an expert is not as hard as you think. If by
| expert, you mean competent enough to contribute then it is
| doable. It is hard to get acclaim in multiple fields. Building
| that status is a life long endeavor. But doing something self-
| actualizing in multiple fields with competence is totally
| achievable.
|
| I personally want to write a book, record an album, publish as
| first author in a tier 1 research conference and patent it,
| create a useful product with real commercial appeal, perform a
| standup special and be a great educator. As long as I don't care
| about citations, billboards or best seller lists it is all
| achievable.
|
| I got the paper/patent out and am on my way to building a useful
| product of my own. I am getting better at the drums and jamming,
| have performed short skit comedy on stage and make sure to write
| long form stuff on useless internet forums. My educational
| pursuits are lagging, but I do try to mentor half a dozen people
| at any given point in time.
|
| I didn't start with most until I was an adult too. As of now, it
| feels achievable. But my ability to achieve it is a purely
| internal pursuit, which helps. My natural ADHDness also helps.
| Ask me again in 30 years, maybe it'll be a good time to write
| about how I tried to do 20 things and succeeded/failed.
|
| The key is to put yourself within easy access of these activities
| and be content with little wins. I wrote skit comedy when i was
| with fellow drama kids. I play drums now that i have a garage. I
| taught when my prof needed summer volunteers. I stubnornly seeked
| a role at the intersection of research and industry to find easy
| opportunities for novel applied research. The fun is in the
| journey. A healthy dose of self-delusion saying you don't care
| about the outcome also helps. I could go into a long tangent on
| the powers of self-delusion....but I'll leave that for another
| day.
| blockwriter wrote:
| The project of your soul is more immense and more important than
| expertise.
| stntrnr wrote:
| Maybe...
|
| ...your ability to appreciate one pursuit or subject will be
| forever impaired by the existential urgency to "catch 'em all".
|
| I realized long ago that I'm addicted to novelty. And I've
| accepted that and I'm okay with it - I love ideas and starting
| things high on the inspiration and vision for the future, only to
| lose steam and switch to something else (lack of higher purpose
| and discipline).
|
| For me, I think it's all about a drive for significance. So I do
| a lot cuz I want to matter and be important, make an impact, dent
| the universe, etc. I don't want to be an expert in terms of
| knowledge, but instead in execution and realizing the initial
| vision. To decide what to go with right now, I've come up with
| the following priority scheme:
|
| 0) things where I have passion, highest excitement, engagement,
| you will not be the best or be an expert if this is not true -
| non-negotiable step 0 1) youth and time advantage - things that
| need me you look younger or be unrestricted by family, mortage,
| energy 2) risk appetite/tolerance advantage - which things are
| higher risk that I can surely accept now but maybe not in the
| future when I have more responsibility 3) unlocking other
| freedoms or opportunities - which things will unlock everything
| else and make them effortless to start - like exiting a startup
| with major $$ so you can put it all into ungodly expensive
| hobbies like becoming an expert rally car racer. I can't do that
| financially right now :( 4) what will help myself and my family,
| friends, tribe in a meaningful way 5) what will help the world in
| a meaningful way, end suffering 6) discover new truths and
| scientific knowledge for the benefit of humanity.
|
| It's essentially a tie-breaking algorithm , shameless hacker plug
| ;).
|
| I'll close with a few quotes/ideas:
|
| - with the strategy above you need to set a clear, achievable
| short term goal with explicit success criteria so you can be
| honest with yourself if discipline wavers and want to switch to
| something else. Trace it to the root cause!
|
| - you should go all-in on it. prioritize, but make it short term
| so you can course correct, do a personal check-in on how it's
| going. Give it at least a week, never more than 90 days. Bite
| sized goals are better because you can have a tighter iteration
| on your process and see if you're happy.
|
| - C's make CEOS because they are smart enough to execute but dumb
| enough to not doubt themselves, enumerate the ways for failure,
| be distracted by exciting new ideas, etc.
|
| - people saying "life is short" made me anxious and stressed for
| a while, and one day my girlfriend said "relax, life is actually
| pretty long". I'm having a better time thinking like that.
|
| - the most important part of life is other people. I heard some
| obscure YouTuber say that about 4 years ago, and I thought it had
| to be more complex than that. I'm increasingly believing he's
| right.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Of the many things, can you rank them?
| edpichler wrote:
| After doing some camping I started to see life differently. You
| need to choose carefully what you will carry in your backpack.
| Yes, we enjoy to do and learn a lot of things, but we need to
| prioritize what is the most important for us.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Well, I figured it'd make most sense to work on eternal life
| first.
|
| But I've found that to be tangential to what I'm actually
| interested in, so I'm still procrastinating.
| litver wrote:
| Maior pars mortalium, Pauline, ...
| AviationAtom wrote:
| The premise that one must be an expert in a singular field is
| interesting, as I have found being a jack of many can be just as
| useful. No less, it can be tough separating the WANT to be an
| expert, versus the NEED to.
|
| I can assure you you're not alone, our brains are just wired a
| certain way. There's silver lining in all things, if you try to
| dig a bit.
| boredemployee wrote:
| If you have the privilege of not having a shit day job I'd say to
| follow your instincts. My love and my passion is producing a
| niched genre of music, I'm very good at it, but it doesnt pay my
| bills so unfortonately I have to have a daily job. So I'm
| accepting that's my destiny as I get older and I don't really
| care about being an expert at it anymore.
| jongjong wrote:
| Somehow I don't think that time is the bottleneck here... The
| problem is that as you become an expert in a new area, you soon
| cease to be an expert in the old area. It's difficult to stay up
| to date and also to keep your skills fresh. If you don't practice
| a skill for a long time, it tends to decline.
| lcall wrote:
| This can be guided by knowing one's purpose in life, and by
| knowing that life does not end when this mortal lifetime ends,
| but we will actually continue to exist; and it is possible, based
| on our individual choices, that our learning, service, and growth
| can continue. For me, this helps take the pressure off. I wrote
| how I know this, at my simple web site (in profile).
|
| There are ways to use our time that brings happiness in things
| that last and are not transient. A scripture says: men are that
| that they might have joy. Another says that what we learn by our
| diligence in this life will remain with us in the world to come.
| So it's definitely not a waste, to learn, and serve others with
| our time.
| asd wrote:
| > knowing that life does not end when this mortal lifetime
| ends.
|
| Citation needed.
| lcall wrote:
| My simple web site (in profile) has many links and
| references, answers to questions, and details. Be sure to
| read the top part about ~ "how to read this site", as I have
| really tried to make the site both readily skimmable, and
| detailed.
|
| I have also learned some of these things for myself, not
| depending only on what others, or books, say. Again, details
| in the site and nothing for sale there, no JS currently
| either.
| groffee wrote:
| "It is a painful thing to say to oneself: by choosing one road I
| am turning my back on a thousand others. Everything is
| interesting; everything might be useful; everything attracts and
| charms a noble mind; but death is before us; mind and matter make
| their demands; willy-nilly we must submit and rest content as to
| things that time and wisdom deny us, with a glance of sympathy
| which is another act of our homage to the truth." - Antonin
| Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions,
| Methods
| erikig wrote:
| I used to get this with books until I came across the Japanese
| concept of Tsundoku which helped identify and calm the anxiety.
| Tsundoku (Ji nDu ) is the acquisition of reading materials and
| letting them pile up without reading them.
| Bakary wrote:
| Reminds me of the concept of antilibrary inspired by Umberto
| Eco.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilibrary
| qatanah wrote:
| Ars longa, vita brevis
|
| "skilfulness takes time and life is short"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_longa,_vita_brevis
| ultra_nick wrote:
| Still everything, but, faster! I just applied to YC with a
| learning accelerator that integrates many subjects into an
| optimized learning plan. The MVP should become useful in the next
| 6 months.
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/company/conceptionary/
| 0x20cowboy wrote:
| You might want to examine the _expert_ part of that statement.
| What exactly does that mean to you?
|
| I have a great many interests, and I shift to focusing between
| them pretty regularly (and have for many years).
|
| I enjoy all of them, but I likely won't make any meaningful
| impact or win an award or have people ask my opinion in any of
| them. I only do them because I enjoy them.
|
| If you're truely honest, your lifetime isn't enough to truly know
| anything - one subject or many subjects. You'll pass away, and
| all your work will be forgotten in time eventually - no matter
| what. Life is impermanent.
|
| So, my random internet advice: if you find one subject you really
| like, go deep. If you have a lot of interests, go wide. If you
| want a fancy job and people to fawn over how intelligent you are,
| be born rich.
| ale_jacques wrote:
| Passion
| elorant wrote:
| I'm curious about a lot of things, and always eager to learn
| something new, but at no point have the desire to become an
| expert. I'm hardly an expert in my every day job. I'm content
| with exploring. I can fix my bicycle if it's broken, but I can't
| fix any bicycle. I can also fix my plumbing up to a point, or
| make general home fixes like paint a room, or maintain the wooden
| shutters, but I can't compete with a professional painter. I just
| don't see the point of investing the extra time to go in all the
| way. It's not like I'll change career any time soon.
| pfkurtz wrote:
| A lot of people here are going to talk negatives and
| prioritization and purpose, but I personally also want to be
| practically omniscient, and you should strive for it too. You
| need strategies if you want to know a lot. Certainly focused
| things like classes and intensive study are necessary from time
| to time (and especially early in life), but we can't do that our
| whole lives, nor do we want to.
|
| What we need is to develop habits of constant learning.
|
| Here is one essential thing you can do to start learning a lot:
|
| Fill your home with dual-language books, and keep opening them.
| Put a stack on your toilet.
|
| By dual-language books, I mean books with the original language
| on one side, and your native language on the other. You'll find
| that the entirely of the classical pantheon, as well as much
| great literature and philosophy from many cultures is available
| in this form.
|
| Spreading math books around your house helps too, of course,
| along with those on the other topics you want to master.
|
| Keep opening them. Life is long, each day you can learn a bit
| more.
|
| "Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through
| ourselves, meeting ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives,
| widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves."
| nudpiedo wrote:
| Then the pages of the books will become dusty and humid, for
| sure deteriorated. Let alone the other beings living in the
| house will also somehow interact with the books in other ways
| than the romantic fantasy setup you proposed.
| pfkurtz wrote:
| What the heck are you even talking about? I gotta say, Hacker
| News is probably one of the least welcoming communities on
| the internet.
| echelon wrote:
| Back in college, I wanted this too. I triple majored in CS,
| biology, and chemistry. But when I looked at the impact I
| wanted to have and the resources I wanted at my disposal and
| compared them to an academic lifestyle, I saw a pretty glaring
| disparity.
|
| The best way to actually command subjects is to work on them.
| Spend some time at companies doing the things you want -
| preferably in high paying jobs - and then start something on
| your own where you have to wear all the hats and submerge
| yourself in the technical details.
|
| It's not as deep as academia, but it's certainly broad. This
| tactic might be what you're looking for.
|
| And if you get exceedingly lucky, you might wind up with the
| capital and stumble upon the kind of unexplored areas ripe for
| growth that Elon Musk did. That's probably the ideal scenario -
| you get to work on incredibly interesting subject matters
| through hiring the best talent in the world. Use your team as a
| high level search and filter algorithm, and be present to learn
| and enjoy the process.
|
| I'm nowhere near as successful but have employed people to do
| exactly that. It's not a bad alternative.
| pfkurtz wrote:
| If you triple majored in 3 technical subjects, I submit that
| your aim was not what I am talking about.
|
| I am talking about how you fit in learning the real knowledge
| of our collective culture over a lifetime, no matter what
| else you do.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Do you want to be "book smart" and only know a lot about what
| someone else thinks and tells you, or actually learn something
| yourself and gain the intuition and detailed understanding that
| you get from forming your own knowledge?
|
| You can read books till the cows come home, but don't expect to
| become an expert from reading alone. I can't imagine anyone on
| their deathbed wishing they'd spent more time reading on the
| toilet Vs actually _practicing_ a skill.
| pfkurtz wrote:
| Lol. Read my first line.
|
| I'm a software engineer posting on Hacker news. I know how to
| learn a skill.
|
| This is something else, that you can have, if you read lots
| of books and learn more languages.
|
| Becoming smart is, in part, about being exposed to lots of
| others thoughts, and lots of facts, and discussing those
| things and thinking through them yourself.
| mattlondon wrote:
| I think you are conflating knowledge with being
| "smart"/intelligent.
|
| One does not beget the other.
| pfkurtz wrote:
| Not even close.
| Ken_At_EM wrote:
| Every time I hear someone bring up the "book smart" versus
| "street smart" false dichotomy it often comes off as someone
| trying to justify their own inadequacies.
|
| I am not calling out the previous reply.
| droobles wrote:
| You are right of course, I experienced that growing up, but
| a good mix of both doesn't hurt!
| Ken_At_EM wrote:
| What's another good label for these types of knowledge so
| that we can avoid the cliche?
|
| Is it as simple as having information and experience?
|
| I have read everything on being a carpenter but I have
| never practiced, so therefore I am "book smart" when it
| comes to carpentry?
|
| I guess this doesn't really cut it because when someone
| claims their "steet smart" as a way to combat feeling
| inferior to someone else they have credited as "book
| smart" what they're really trying to say is that they
| have knowledge that's more useful in different
| situations? Or more practical situations?
|
| The more I think about this the more it seems like
| claiming to be "street smart" is just saying "hey, I'm
| smart too, just in a different way" when you're feeling a
| bit less than someone.
| pfkurtz wrote:
| There's an obvious example in programming: one might read
| a lot about machine learning, without becoming a
| practitioner. Without actually doing some work, one's
| opinions about building AIs wouldn't be worth much.
|
| What breaks down is thinking this dichotomy captures the
| state of play wrt knowing lots of things. One of course
| has to practice knowledge, if that knowledge involves
| practicable skills, if one wants mastery.
|
| If one wants to know history, or philosophy, or... many
| of the actual large bodies of knowledge that exist... one
| needs to get comfortable very regularly opening books.
| That doesn't mean it's all that's required!
| enduser wrote:
| I think about what forms of expertise will be meaningful when I
| am dying.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Wait 10-40 years for more progress with AI and brain-computer-
| interfaces.
|
| The good news is that it will likely be completely possible to
| effectively be an expert in all of those things. The bad news is
| that everyone else will be an expert also.
|
| It will probably be kind of like what has happened now with
| Google and arguments over trivia. Just 10 or 100 times more
| integrated and in-depth.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Don't worry, life will sort it out. Eventually you will realize
| that you cannot even be an expert of a niche field.
| slmjkdbtl wrote:
| Pick one field and start practicing everyday, you'll be amazed
| what you can achieve on one thing in one year with even only 2hr
| daily practice.
| testcase_delta wrote:
| I second this. It's really stunning what you can learn by
| logging an hour or two a day. I really like to add Anki to my
| daily practice routine. I take advantage of screenshotting and
| jot my notes in Anki in a questions/answer format instead of in
| a notebook. It's great for learning the core concepts or
| vocabulary of a new skill.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| Be an expert in happiness. It's very rewarding.
| freediver wrote:
| Wanting something is easy, doing is hard. Get past wanting to
| doing and it will automatically filter to a manageable set of
| goals.
| lisper wrote:
| You need to make your peace with the fact that there will always
| be vastly more things you don't know than things that you do.
| That would be true even if your life were 10x longer or 100x
| longer. Your life span is not the limiting factor. The size of
| your brain is the limiting factor. At the very least, there are 8
| billion other brains out there, and your brain cannot contain all
| of the knowledge contained in those 8 billion others.
|
| But there are some fields of knowledge that give you more
| leverage towards obtaining expertise than others. Being an expert
| in Lisp, for example, will not make you an expert in C++. But it
| _will_ let you realize that becoming an expert in C++ is very
| likely to be a waste of time, because being an expert in C++
| means knowing a lot of random and mostly arbitrary trivia that
| has accumulated over many decades of bad decision-making.
|
| There are a lot of examples of subjects that give you similar
| kinds of leverage. There are probably a dozen core topics that
| allow you to cut vast swathes through most of human knowledge:
| basic physics (GR and QM), the theory of computation and
| complexity theory, game theory and the theory of evolution (and
| how these are related) is probably the 80/20 list. So if you
| really want to maximize your expertise I would start by focusing
| on a few of those topics.
|
| But, as others have pointed out, you really should take a step
| back and ask yourself _why_ you want to become an expert in many
| things. Do you want expertise for its own sake, or do you want
| the prestige that comes from having others perceive you as an
| expert? Because those are two very different goals.
| ilaksh wrote:
| One thing to realize is that the most relevant skills and
| knowledge are changing rapidly. So maybe it's better to be an
| expert in adapting to and adopting new approaches.
|
| Because being an expert in less practical subjects that are
| slightly dated can still be useful and interesting but may tend a
| little more towards vanity.
| droobles wrote:
| I just go with whatever my jack-of-all trades wants to do that
| day. Right now it's mastering French, before it was playing drums
| and bass in a hardcore punk band, and before that it was finance
| and the market, and before that using a new XPen tablet to draw
| panels for a graphic novel concept my brother wrote as well as
| some F/64-meets-Cezanne style landscapes. All while working on a
| startup, and trying to maintain a social life. I rotate through
| these and others throughout the years.
|
| I know I most likely won't be the best at any of them in my
| lifetime, but really it's not a competition for me and I'm having
| fun.
|
| Only piece of advice is avoid content mills like Tiktok and
| Instagram that are designed to get you addicted and keep you from
| doing the things you love - although on the other hand those
| things can spark inspiration!
| carapace wrote:
| I was this kind in my youth. I felt like my brain was this
| incredibly powerful cannon, floating in a force cradle, swiveling
| wildly in all directions, "targeting... targeting...
| targeting..." all I had to do was locate the target and fire, but
| I could never locate the target.
|
| What happened was interesting, but perhaps not applicable to you.
| The best advice I can give you is to find ways to benefit others.
| That's the open secret of life: one's own happiness flows from
| bringing happiness to others (self and other are ultimately
| illusions, All are One.)
| chillpenguin wrote:
| I would say you should work on things that will have a bigger
| impact. Some things might be fun/interesting but the impact will
| be extremely low (or none at all).
|
| Another tip is to vigilantly avoid time wasting traps like
| instagram, facebook, video games, pointless youtube videos, etc.
| This will give you a LOT more time to pursue other things.
|
| But yeah, this is a tough burden for us to bear. I mean, it is
| literally the oldest problem in human existence: our short time
| on this earth. It reminds me of a song from ancient Greece
| (literally the oldest surviving complete musical composition)[1]:
| While you live, shine have no grief at all life
| exists only for a short while and Time demands his due.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikilos_epitaph
| musha68k wrote:
| I bet computer and video games are an extra hard trap to
| uncover for many (in here).
|
| For me personally they often have been and still are a much
| needed way to escape plus a conduit to a multitude of other
| interests and my professional career (not directly related).
|
| OTOH and more often than I would like to admit these days its
| meaningless, consumerist time wasting at best and an addiction
| at worst.
|
| Taking away from other things and relationships even.
|
| Yet even with the same old games and principles and all the
| addictive aspects I'd still love it as a hobby (in low doses)
| but I'm probably also not the only one still fooling themselves
| that it's more than that.
|
| Maybe it's time to finally move on again (feels very hard
| though).
| h2odragon wrote:
| Before you have family: what's fun and will improve the state of
| the world (not necessarily the _whole_ world, just bits you can
| reach).
|
| After having family, what benefits them may reasonably be the
| higher priority.
| csh0 wrote:
| I can appreciate how you feel because, I, along with many others
| here (as illustrated by the responses to this post) feel the same
| way.
|
| What has been particularity important for me in dealing with this
| is to not let this desire to be versed in a wide array of
| subjects lend itself to a state of thrashing. It is my goal to
| possess a range of knowledge, but I know that it will not be
| perfectly all encompassing, but good or some is better than none.
|
| When I say thrashing I am referring to precisely the same sort of
| thrashing which computers might endure, process thrashing,
| wherein "when the process working set cannot be coscheduled - so
| not all interacting processes are scheduled to run at the same
| time - they experience 'process thrashing' due to being
| repeatedly scheduled and unscheduled, progressing only
| slowly."[0] I was first introduced to this idea and it's
| application to human life through the book Algorithms to Live By,
| by Brian Christian and Thomas L. Griffiths and I try to keep it
| in mind.
|
| I couple this idea with some advice from Donald Knuth which he
| extols in the form of an anecdote about his mother (shared by
| Shuvomoy Das Gupta): "My mother is amazing to watch because she
| doesn't do anything efficiently, really: She puts about three
| times as much energy as necessary into everything she does. But
| she never spends any time wondering what to do next or how to
| optimize anything; she just keeps working. Her strategy, slightly
| simplified, is, "See something that needs to be done and do it."
| All day long. And at the end of the day, she's accomplished a
| huge amount."
|
| This second bit of advice is useful because it reminds me not to
| get hung up on optimization or identifying the best possible
| learning pathway. When you aspire to learn many different things,
| there's nearly an infinite number of places you can get stuck,
| you can get so stuck in fact, that you fail to learn very much at
| all.
|
| The last bit of advice is a general one: pick the subjects which
| are most fundamental. For example, say I would like to learn
| about Zoology, Botany, and Marine Biology. It is most
| advantageous to choose to study Biology first, as it underpins
| the three. Then, down the line, should I take the time to dig
| into each subject in particular, my rate of learning will be
| accelerated. This isn't anything special, and is in fact the
| basis of most modern STEM education, learn the fundamentals
| (math, physics, chemistry, biology) etc. and then the later in-
| depth topics are built upon that foundation.
|
| So, to summarize:
|
| Pick a subject (the more fundamental the better), think (a little
| bit, but not too much) about how you will approach learning it,
| and simply begin. If something else comes along and piques your
| interest, feel free to switch gears and follow that interest, but
| be sure to avoid thrashing, hopping from subject to subject or
| task to task so rapidly that you aren't picking up anything at
| all. Just as the other commenters here said, you will be amazed
| at just how much knowledge you accumulate over time.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrashing_(computer_science)#:...
|
| [1] https://shuvomoy.github.io/blogs/posts/Knuth-on-work-
| habits-....
| vbezhenar wrote:
| My perspective is that I probably won't be an expert in a single
| field (though there's still time). I spent enough time with Java
| to be fairly proficient with it. Other than that, I call myself
| full stack developer and that means that I touched a lot of areas
| in IT. I'm good Linux user, I can administer Linux servers, I can
| tinker with OpenBSD, I know quite a lot of languages, I think
| that I touched every popular language and I'm pretty fluent at JS
| and C. I'm good enough with databases, I'm know few things about
| hardware. This year I learned how to provision a k8s cluster and
| install some things there. This year I tried to get hold on
| microelectronics and microcontrollers but somewhat failed because
| of lack of time, though I'll get there eventually.
|
| I'm absolutely not an expert in any of those fields and I'm not
| going to be. But my knowledge is enough to get things running and
| to tinker with it until it works if necessary.
|
| I like it this way because I just get bored pretty quickly
| working on a single thing. Doing different things prevent be from
| burning out and keeps IT fun. And I think that this kind of guy
| is very helpful for small companies which can't hire experts for
| every thing. You can temporarily hire contractors but in my
| experience that often leads to subpar solutions as they want to
| get money and run away, doing as little work as possible instead
| of building solid foundation and writing lots of docs.
|
| So how do I decide which things to work on? Well, whatever I need
| and whatever makes me want to stay at work. Many things.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| I'm like that too. I don't think I could actually become a
| 'real' expert at something that tiny. Way too boring.
|
| I think of myself as an expert at software development. I have
| broad knowledge I can apply towards lots of 'problems'. I have
| a past of Linux and network administration which has always
| helped with bridging the gap of talking to and building for our
| actual admins and nowadays interfacing with SREs and knowing
| enough about k8s, I know how to read and diagnose error
| messages from tools and libraries and stacks I have never seen
| or built stuff in etc. I can write software in many a language
| you throw at me though I have ones I use regularly and actually
| know stuff about. I won't jump on building you a highly
| optimized trading platform using only Java primitive types as
| an 'expert' in that might because I'd find that very tedious
| and boring. Reading about it is very fun though!
|
| Becoming an expert at just one thing in software to me sounds
| like being a carpenter and all you do every single day is to
| build walls. Nothing else (i.e. be a framer) or doing dry wall.
| Sure I'd probably get super fast and efficient at it. But it's
| gonna be boring as hell. I'd rather learn how to do many if not
| most of the jobs needed to build a wall, finish a basement,
| build a shed and roof it etc.
|
| I guess what I am trying to say is that I scratch my itch by
| just doing the bits of everything I find interesting to some
| degree. Some I go into more deeply because they are interesting
| to me for a longer period of time. Others get boring fast and
| it's fine not to become an 'expert' in. Breadth first search
| for interesting stuff. If I did depth first I'd only get like 3
| things into my lifetime and never know what I might have missed
| somewhere else.
| pkrotich wrote:
| Mastery is often encouraged - even with tropes like "Jack of
| trades master of none" used to deliver insults to some of us -
| but saying used in full phrase is "a jack of all trades is a
| master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." ~
| Shakespeare
|
| Most of us won't be polymaths per se but we now live in a world
| where information and knowledge are in abundance in whatever
| field of interest and for the most part it's almost "free".
|
| With abundance and accessibility (regardless of your class to
| some extend) can create anxiety and depression or even paralysis
| since prioritizing shifts entirely on you - mentally as opposed
| to life's circumstances forcing you to a particular path because
| that's or was the only option. I believe this is a major source
| of anxiety and even depression in the internet age.
|
| My point is, unlike many commenters, I see your point and even
| share what you're feeling to some extend. Most people assume it's
| just a matter of priorities, killing FOMO and perhaps being
| content with life you have now or whatever life has handed you,
| but it's not that simple. It's much deeper.
|
| Perhaps you're dealing with Chronophobia [0] of some sort that
| need to be addressed. For me it manifested itself as fear of not
| having enough time to read all the books that interests me - even
| if I start reading 24/7 now! My wishlist is insanely long and
| growing, yet I'm hoarding books and magazines I bought years ago
| because I simply don't have time! With help of an expert, I was
| able to trace my fear to growing up in third-word county in a
| village setting; curious about everything but with zero access to
| books / library or entertainment for that matter. I read
| everything I got my hands to kill time and quench my curiosity
| and now I have access to all books in the word but no time!
|
| [0] -
| https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22579-chronop...
| imtemplain wrote:
| imtemplain wrote:
| mathgeek wrote:
| I'd recommend reading
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41795733-range if only to see
| why being a generalist is another option. You should feel free to
| allow yourself the flexibility to switch your interests as you
| change throughout your life.
| wespiser_2018 wrote:
| I try to work on what I find most interesting, and am capable of
| doing. Stuff like single photon path distance stuff and LIDAR is
| really cool, and no doubt I could spend the whole weekend reading
| about it, but that's not easily within reach given my background
| (could be wrong). However, there are topics that are closely
| related to my job skills, and if I push hard on them I should be
| able to move my career in that direction. I'm a backend engineer,
| so topics like compilers, distributed systems, or databases are
| what I'm most interested in. All really cool tech that have deep
| academic domains and rich histories and very technical
| implementations.
|
| My general approach is to take tiny steps in the direction I want
| to go everyday, ie, use the power of habit. This has several
| advantages, but mostly it's just easier for me if studying is a
| habit. Right now, that means doing a LeetCode problem every day
| to stay sharp for job interviews, reading about databases, and
| starting a new project where I implement a database myself,
| probably in Rust, so I need to learn Rust as well.
|
| I do generally agree that there isn't enough time to spend on
| what you want, and work takes up way too much time, but in my
| experience accepting your limitations and learning to live a
| balanced life with devotion to tech interests and hobbies has
| been essential to staying healthy. Put another way, I don't want
| a crazy job where I grind it out for 65+ hours a week and burn
| out in 11 months, burn out is very unhealthy for me. Instead, my
| philosophy is one of sustainable daily movement, setting myself
| up for working not 2 more years, but 20.
| larve wrote:
| I had the same problem, and I rephrased the "problem". If
| everyday I do things that make me feel I get better at becoming
| an expert in things that interest me, and I do that consistently
| my whole life, then that will be a life well-lived. Doing that
| gives me purpose and satisfaction every single day.
|
| "Expertise" is not something that exists per se, so as a goal, it
| is unreachable. In fact, the more I have put this approach to
| use, the more I realize how many things exist that I will never
| become an expert on. It also makes me realize that whatever I
| have the most actual expertise on is but a tiny tiny grain in the
| vast sea of knowledge in that one specific field!
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| sbfeibish wrote:
| Find a problem you are capable of solving. Make sure the problem
| has a paying audience and is worth your while. Work on the
| solution to that problem. Focus! Learn what you have to learn to
| come up with the solution and sell it.
|
| (Put off learning all you need to know about investing, health,
| and science. You can spend the entire day without getting any
| work done. Once you're independently wealthy you can spend your
| time as you wish.)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| _Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for
| there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the
| grave, whither thou goest._
|
| Ecclesiastes 9:10
|
| Basically, do the best work you can at whatever it is you need to
| do. In the end none of it matters.
| jasonkester wrote:
| Good advice, and it can be quoted from dozens of places
| throughout history. A few...
|
| Confucius: "Wherever you go, go with all your heart"
|
| Sinatra: "If you're going to do it, it's no good unless you do
| it all the way"
|
| Snowboarder: "Go Big."
| gduzan wrote:
| First, have you asked yourself why you want to be an expert in
| many things? If it is just to know things, then it doesn't
| matter; just keep learning until you can't anymore. If it is to
| apply the knowledge to something, then you can use that fact to
| determine how much utility over time the knowledge of each thing
| would have, and focus on the greatest first.
| Victerius wrote:
| > First, have you asked yourself why you want to be an expert
| in many things?
|
| Not the OP, but here's my answer. I want to be able to win
| arguments. If I debate the merits of an economic proposal with
| you, and you say, "Sure, and what are your qualifications,
| exactly? Do you have a PhD in economics?", I want to be able to
| say, "Yes, I do have a PhD in economics, actually", or "I have
| read over 490 books about economics, including graduate-level
| texts. What are YOUR qualifications?". I want to be able to
| stand my ground with credentialed experts without necessarily
| having the same degrees.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Arguments are seldom "won" outside of something like a formal
| debate with point scoring.
|
| Arguing with most people is like mud-wrestling with a pig.
| You both get dirty and the pig enjoys it.
| dixie_land wrote:
| If being an expert wins you arguments we wouldn't have flat
| earthers
| sockaddr wrote:
| Realistically a lot of people who you'd otherwise learn from
| will avoid discussing things with you because of this
| behavior. Meanwhile those willing to listen and who aren't as
| concerned with winning arguments will learn much more than
| you.
|
| EDIT: to expand on this, the smartest person I ever knew (the
| late Justin Corwin. Maybe someone here also knew him) would
| sit quietly during arguments until someone asked his opinion.
| Even if you got something wrong he wouldn't correct you
| unless he knew it would help you. He didn't lord shallow
| facts over people like many others do and his knowledge went
| deeper than you could explore with mere discussion. After
| knowing someone like this It has forever changed how I
| evaluate people's intelligence. Some intelligent people are
| not at all concerned about winning arguments and it's
| extremely refreshing.
| Victerius wrote:
| > his knowledge went deeper than you could explore with
| mere discussion.
|
| Another principle of mine: There are no oracles. There is
| no individual, past, present, or future, who cannot be
| surpassed. No one is a knowledge god. If I learned
| everything Justin knew, and that wouldn't be too difficult,
| I imagine, then I, too, could gain a level of knowledge
| that goes deeper than one could explore with mere
| discussion, according to you.
| sockaddr wrote:
| > I imagine, then I, too, could gain a level of knowledge
| that goes deeper than one could explore with mere
| discussion, according to you.
|
| Yes, you could. Your point is?
| Victerius wrote:
| My point is: Let's not put anyone on a pedestal because
| of their cerebral skills.
|
| Great athletes, great artists, sure.
| sockaddr wrote:
| No one is doing that. I'm trying to explain to you that
| you might get more milage (learning more) by using a
| different approach and then giving you an example from my
| life. If that doesn't work for you that's fine. Have a
| great day and good luck.
| pdntspa wrote:
| Ok but... why?
| aintmeit wrote:
| paulcole wrote:
| > I want to be able to win arguments.
|
| The easier route to this is to talk loudly and confidently
| until the other person gives up.
| pdntspa wrote:
| That is an awful lot of effort just to be able to prove a
| point, which may or may not actually come up. Choose wisely!
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Give up on that ambition. There are a lot of very intelligent
| people in the world. They will know more about their subject
| than you.
|
| Learn instead to recognize expertise.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| > I want to be able to win arguments.
|
| You just need to master rhetoric. No need to be a master of a
| specific subject to be able to twist arguments in your favor.
| psyc wrote:
| I am this kind. Jeez, how old are you and how many life-shorting
| conditions do you have stacked against you? My strategy has
| always been to visit each hobby round robin. I'll spend x weeks
| on music until I'm not feeling it or I finish something, then
| switch to animation and do the same, then game programming, etc,
| etc. I've always felt like there's way, way, way, way too much
| time in a life time but that's because I spend half of it
| suffering crippling depression. I'm supposed to be working on
| animation today but I'm here. Imagine how many planets I'd have
| conquered single handedly if Eliezer Yudkowsky had never started
| mentioning this frikkin site. Time to go make some use of that
| freedom.to subscription.
| zackmorris wrote:
| I struggle with this too, as I have many hundreds of inventions
| scattered across my notes that I'll never get to make. The
| interesting thing is that many of them have manifested through
| the work of others over the last 20-30 years, although some are
| so fringe that I don't expect them to come into being without
| effort on my part.
|
| The thought of never being able to make what's in my heart sent
| me to a dark place a few years ago and coincided with a profound
| burnout and breakdown in my physical health just before the
| pandemic.
|
| As I've healed, I've come to believe in reincarnation. Not some
| woo woo metaphysical thing that can never be proven (it can't),
| but more like, having chapters or past lives within lives,
| usually transitioned through major life events and trauma. As in,
| my daily lived experience and worldview no longer align with the
| ones I had growing up, going off to school, entering my career,
| losing friends and family along the way, etc. This is maybe my
| 7th chapter?
|
| Not only that, but we experience being ourselves in different
| lives when we dream. It's not a stretch for me to imagine waking
| up tomorrow in someone else's life, with no memory of my own.
| Which brings me peace, as it takes some of the pressure off of
| performing in my own life if my lived experience is just as
| sacred with the same dignity as everyone else's.
|
| Where this matters is how I think about success and failure.
| Imagine if every risk we take is a coin flip that determines the
| next chapter of our lives in our next reality. Heads: we succeed
| and build upon that success. Tails: we fail and find ourselves
| deeper in the hole we've dug for ourselves.
|
| Most of my heroes are successful people like Steve Wozniak and
| John Carmack. They enjoyed early success and found backing by
| benefactors who helped them stay on course and make the
| contributions in their hearts.
|
| But I also feel a kinship with failures like Vincent van Gogh and
| Oscar Wilde. They worked in relative obscurity, never feeling
| like they accomplished what they wanted to do, all the way until
| the day they died.
|
| My own life feels like a series of say 10 coin flips that all
| came up tails. In some ways I'm in the most wretched reality, the
| 1 of 1024 possible that most acutely exacerbates my suffering.
|
| But that's not quite right, because my life is an equal balance
| of good and bad, in which serendipity gave me the most amazing
| experiences and opportunities. Almost like the universe was
| listening and went out of its way to lay the path for me to
| travel. I just didn't notice, because I was so wrapped up in
| external measures of success that I forgot that the important
| part is being alive and conscious to experience it all.
|
| Now I have a pragmatic view of success and failure. I'm happy
| when people make it. But that's their experience, their life,
| their reality. What it really comes down to is, what to do with
| the time that is given to us, quoting Gandalf.
|
| I think of reality now like a video game where we popped in a
| quarter to get an extra life. We do our best, we make our mark,
| then we find ourselves doing it all over again. I try to help
| people who have that fire in their belly to make the world a
| better place. But I'm concerned about people who haven't woken up
| to these sorts of ideas, who chase extreme wealth and power, in
| the end hurting an aspect of themselves in another life.
|
| At the end of the day, my mantra is whatever it takes. I do
| whatever I can from moment to moment to shift into the reality I
| wish to exist in, through mindfulness meditation and daily
| practice to form habits which get me closer to my goals. As I've
| become more aware of concepts like co-creation, I've found that
| life opens up with new possibilities I hadn't conceived of, which
| has helped me find meaning and reaffirmed my belief in free will
| and freedom itself.
|
| Practically, that means that I take care of my body's health, I
| go to work, but I define my own boundaries now. I take time for
| my own projects regardless of consequence, confident in my
| ability to handle what creation throws at me. I don't let others'
| lived experience overshadow my own anymore. I've gotten to
| experience the feeling of success lately,
| physically/mentally/spiritually, and it feels wonderful after so
| many years of struggling.
|
| Basically, choose the one thing most dear to your heart, and go
| do that.
|
| But these are my views through my filter. Please take them as
| leads, not conclusions. Apologies that this got so long again,
| but hey, it's Sunday.
| kazinator wrote:
| Once can be an expert in things that are complete crap, or that
| are of no consequence, or both. Have some personal way of
| identifying those topics and shun them.
| pella wrote:
| > I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't be
| enough
|
| > If you are this kind, how do you decide which things to work
| on?
|
| First step:
|
| - You need to be an expert in prioritisation!
| [deleted]
| giomasce wrote:
| Believe in a religion that postulates an infinite life after the
| current one. If you're right, big win: you're going to have all
| the time you want; of not, by the time you know you don't care
| any more.
| emrah wrote:
| Do you know the story of the donkey in the middle between a
| bucket of water and a pile of hay? https://sive.rs/donkey
|
| So the answer is: one at a time
|
| If you can't decide, say, if all subjects are the same level of
| interest to you, pick one at random and spend 5 years on it. See
| where that gets you. If you are satisfied or bored, pick the next
| subject.
| tekinosman wrote:
| Don't decide which things to work on and risk analysis paralysis
| along with a string of other negative feelings.
|
| Let curiosity guide you, explore as many domains as you're able
| and willing to and become competent with most of them. The more
| domains you weave into the web of knowledge, notwithstanding the
| lack of expertise, the higher the probability you'll find links
| across the ever expanding network. Maybe delve deep into the
| foundation, occasionally or frequently, for you could stumble
| into something new. Consider teaching or talking about your
| knowledge; open a blog, write a book, whatever. It'll help others
| as well as you, now and later.
|
| In the end, whether through our descendants, works or knowledge,
| we're all child of that instinct to leave something after our
| death, of which your post is yet another manifestation.
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| I let my natural curiosity guide me. I used to beat myself up
| about not being one of those people who have a singular purpose,
| someone who focuses deeply in one area, but found solace in Susan
| Fowler's blog post:
|
| "All of the really great people of the past and of the present
| always have some singular destiny. Somehow they know exactly what
| they love, they find it when they're young, and they spend their
| entire lives doing that one thing. Their destiny, their singular
| passion becomes their entire life, and they love every minute of
| it. It's their calling, it's what they were born to do, and it's
| beautiful."
|
| ...
|
| "People tell me I can't do all the things I want to do, and they
| are of course wrong, because I can and I do and I will. But I
| still can't ever reach my greatest, deepest, most secret goal,
| the goal I left off that list: to have a singular passion. Maybe
| that's ok. Maybe my life will always be about running toward that
| unattainable goal, trying and loving everything I find along the
| way. And maybe at the end, when I have to give an account of my
| life, I'll say that I never was anything, but I was everything."
|
| Source: https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/5/21/life-without-
| a-d...
| yla92 wrote:
| I was about to post the same link from Susan! I found myself a
| lot in the post and made me felt like I was not alone feeling
| that way.
| droobles wrote:
| Thank you for this, I remember hearing about this article but
| didn't bookmark it myself.
| weregiraffe wrote:
| You should work on life extension. If you succeed, you'll have
| more time to work on other things.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I'm glad so many of us see the obvious solution :)
| vfinn wrote:
| You do something and see whether it sticks. If it does, you
| continue; if it doesn't you switch. Then later on you might come
| back to the previous thing.
| robg wrote:
| What kind(s) of expertise do you want to realize? You could
| pursue expertise in a trade, starting as an apprentice then
| working your way with experience into master status (software,
| plumbing, electrical, etc). The advanced degrees are relative,
| but costly, shortcuts to specific domains of expertise (MBA, PhD,
| MD, etc). Then there's expertise that can be pursued as hobbies -
| gardening, woodworking, cooking, sewing, etc.
|
| Have you made a list of how you'd like to spend your time each
| week? Over years and decades, the time devoted to learning adds
| up!
| bergenty wrote:
| Life isn't enough for anything, I want to spend decades on so
| many interesting things but all I can assign to them are
| weekends.
| bhedgeoser wrote:
| Marketing and public relations. Raise as much money for anti-
| aging research as possible.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| There's and old book "On the shortness of life" that you might
| want to read as part of your journey.
|
| Ultimately, finding one's focus is the hardest and most rewarding
| part of life.
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| Extending life. Subjects to looks at:
|
| https://www.sens.org/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics
|
| Of course, even with a long enough life span you run into issues
| of brain capacity, but that is another discussion.
| ummonk wrote:
| The first thing you should focus on working on is longevity /
| life extension research.
| mrrobot900 wrote:
| I see a lot of answers that revolve around the question of "how
| to make the most effective use of the limited time I have". A
| very rationalistic point of view (no surprise since it's HN).
|
| I'll give a different perspective: trust your gut feelings! In
| Emotional Intelligence, the author Daniel Goleman[1] writes
|
| > [Some of life's big decisions] cannot be made well through
| sheer rationality; they require gut feeling, and the emotional
| wisdom garnered through past experiences. Formal logic alone can
| never work as the basis for deciding whom to marry or trust or
| even what job to take; these are realms where reason without
| feeling is blind.
|
| It seems like you are already aware that you don't have enough
| time to learn everything, there's just too much options to choose
| from! Perhaps a better approach is to rely on your experience,
| trust that you will make a good enough decision, and learn how to
| be comfortable with making choices that are not necessarily
| optimal, but close. There's a reason for the saying: perfect is
| the enemy of good!
|
| [1] https://www.danielgoleman.info/
| SergeAx wrote:
| According to several sources, both scientific and esoteric,
| intuition (AKA gut feeling) is just underrealized experience.
| E.g. for intuition to work one have to get a lot experience.
| Which, in turn, requires time.
| LelouBil wrote:
| True, but going "Yolo gut feeling" can also be a way to stop
| being stuck and forcing to make a decision.
|
| I think OP will be happy with whatever they choose to do, as
| long as they choose it and being worried before making any
| choice prevents them from truly trying to do something.
| prhn wrote:
| Even if you had unlimited time it's unlikely you'd become an
| expert in many things, even if many only means 3-5.
|
| I know this isn't very scientific, but as someone who's struggled
| with this same question I would suggest just diving into any one
| of the things that you're interested in. From there let your
| instincts and intuition naturally decide what you continue doing
| and what you abandon.
|
| I've learned that it's hard to force continued work in any area
| that feels like a slog. Our personalities are tuned to prefer
| certain activities or fields of study over others.
|
| Find what feels natural and go, go, go.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| "I know that I know nothing" - Socrates
|
| "The wise man is one who, knows, what he does not know." -- Lao
| Tzu
|
| This is not to say "give up". But it is saying that you need to
| "give up" the idea and you will find peace.
| proboy wrote:
| You can't be an expert in many things.
|
| Be an expert in one thing + know a little of more other things
| vfinn wrote:
| If subject A's and subject B's synthesis created a new thing C,
| wouldn't he then be considered an expert in C, solely because
| there's no-one else doing what he's doing? In this way you
| could be an expert in many things you yourself pioneered... Or
| you could just create a new game and be expert at that.
| dylanwenzlau wrote:
| Ah yes. I phrase this as wanting to duplicate myself many times
| over. Much to do, little time.
|
| I'm attempting to put a dent into increasing our timelines
| (longevity) with my current project, Guava. The other way to get
| more time is to experience more in the same time, and for this we
| need improved brains and interfaces. I'll be ambitious and put my
| effort into these things because it will allow me to do more if
| successful.
| udasitharani wrote:
| I can completely relate to you. Curiosity, fun of education and
| adventure of building cool things is what I live by too.
|
| What I personally do for this is I go by what I call chaotic
| learning. Spending chunks of my time in different things based
| whatever interest me at that moment. For example, I am currently
| only trying to gain expertise in software engineering. I am super
| interested in math, philosophy, history, science etc too. But
| currently, I want to focus specifically on software and then
| after a certain point (idk when that point will be, maybe after
| I've financial freedom, maybe not), I will explore other fields
| too. But in software itself, there are so many things to do and
| learn too. So what I do is, today I am working on a side project
| to do with the terminal. After a few days, once I publish a v0.1,
| I will work a bit on an open source project I'm interested in.
| Post that, I might do some DSA. Post that, maybe back to my side
| project adding another new feature. Then maybe read one of the
| many books I want to read. Then maybe try to learn and build my
| own language and so on. You learn/build different things from
| time to time, based on what you really want to pick. That works
| the best for me. Chaos.
| Centigonal wrote:
| _Four Thousand Weeks_ is a good book that touches on this. It
| begins with the premise that most people have infinite desires,
| and all people have finite time, and it 's unlikely you will
| accomplish even 1% of all of your dreams in your finite life. It
| then talks about how that's okay, because what we choose to spend
| our time and attention on is what makes us unique and
| interesting, and explores some ways to prioritize the things that
| are most important to youm so that you actually do those things.
| saulpw wrote:
| Humans have the appetites of gods and the stomachs of mortals.
| animesh wrote:
| Great quote, where is this from? Certainly true for me, it
| seems so far.
| rmetzler wrote:
| I'm a generalist. I know I don't have time to be an expert in
| everything. I buy a lot of books about a lot of subjects I'm
| interested in, but I don't have the time to read all of them.
|
| But when some work comes my way, the large bookshelf comes in
| handy, because the books' authors knew more than I do.
|
| Sometimes I just buy a book to see if some technology would fit
| my use case or not. I think it's faster and cheaper than to dig
| into online documentation.
| reality_inspctr wrote:
| I built an app to model this out. It forecasts your future down
| to the millisecond. It's super simple right now, but has a "time
| machine" function to see where you'll be in 5 / 10 / 30 years --
| and whole life. i.e. You might spend 20,000 hours in the bathroom
| and 10,000 hours writing novels.
|
| What's valuable to me and the people who have used it is to
| compare how much time you'll spend on type 1 hedonistic fun vs.
| type 2 accretive fun.
|
| Free / easy. https://app.sundialcalendar.com/
| fezfight wrote:
| I enjoyed messing around with that. I'm very old and your app
| helped reinforce that. I have a stupid question that is likely
| due to my age. Please feel free to ignore me. Why is this
| called an app and not a webpage? Is it just modern parlance or
| is there some functional difference?
| davchana wrote:
| I have not opened the link above poster shared, but in my
| mind, a webpage is linear, like a page, where I read, and get
| info. It does not change state significantly if it even
| offers any interaction with user. There might be a new oage
| loading, or images load dynamically, but it does not get or
| ask information from user, process it & then spit out some
| data about it.
|
| An app usually displays something on a page, but most of the
| data is asked from me, app processes it, stores it, displays
| it.
| rmetzler wrote:
| It's a website, because it has a URL, you use a browser to
| access it and it's written in html, css and JavaScript.
|
| It's an app, because it's interactive. App means application,
| program, etc. but it doesn't necessarily needs to be
| downloaded.
| prox wrote:
| Prioritize what you love to do, love to work on. You will
| naturally become an expert in the areas you like to do.
|
| Also good ideas aren't vague, "I want to be an expert in many
| things" is too vague for an attainable goal.
| possiblydrunk wrote:
| If you want to master many things, you must first master one.
| Pick a personal or professional interest and start learning. Do
| it now and don't waste time choosing, for the choice will
| ultimately not matter.
| closedloop129 wrote:
| Is your lifetime not enough or could the resources to become an
| expert be better?
|
| Looking at sports, it becomes obvious how much can be achieved
| with the right training. Unfortunately, right now, only the most
| promising talent in a field receives the best training. If we can
| automate that, it would be much easier to become an expert in
| many fields.
|
| So, if you don't want to decide, you could also improve the
| infrastructure for becoming an expert.
| pitsnatch wrote:
| >Looking at sports, it becomes obvious how much can be achieved
| with the right training.
|
| Could you elaborate? I wasn't aware of this.
| closedloop129 wrote:
| In general, times get better. Where does that come from if
| humans don't mutate that fast? It's also visible in
| gymnastics and similar sports where routines become more
| advanced.
|
| There are other factors, like a bigger global population and
| drugs. But that's secondary for sports where participants
| show off complex movements.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Whatever you decide on, don't "fake it 'til you make it", even if
| that has proved to be a working strategy in certain countries and
| cultures.
| throwyawayyyy wrote:
| Is expertise the means, or the end? How would be an expert in x
| or y improve your day-to-day life?
|
| Counterpoint: on a whim over Christmas I bought a flute. I don't
| play a musical instrument, I've no particular musical talents,
| but I've been working at it consistently if not deeply, half an
| hour a day, every day, since. I will never, ever be an expert at
| the flute. I will be better at it though; there are pieces I can
| play in August which I couldn't play in July. It adds to my life.
| If the goal were to become an _expert_ flautist then a) I would
| be delusional but b) it would no longer be a nice little
| interlude in the day. Were I to magically mature into a concert-
| level flautist, _would I enjoy giving concerts?_ Pretty sure the
| answer is no. Expertise is neither a realistic nor desirable
| goal.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| The best advice I ever got on this was to notice the things that
| nobody else wants to deal with that seem important. Those are
| opportunities. It turns out, some of them are pretty fun.
|
| And after that have hobbies that have as little to do with your
| job as possible.
| rayiner wrote:
| What makes you think you can be an expert in even one thing?
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >What makes you think you can be an expert in even one thing?
|
| That's what I was thinking.
|
| For an interesting approach, pick things which are unusual in
| the way you can clearly see that the established experts are
| wrong.
|
| Then you would be misguided if you tried to do it like they do
| anyway.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| If that idea of your lifetime not being enough is stressing you
| out, Dr David Burns' work on cognitive behavioural therapy might
| help. Saying you want to be an expert in many things because you
| are interested in many things could be papering over some deeper
| anxiety-driven motivations around 'not being good enough' or 'not
| being worthy of respect' or 'needing to prove yourself to
| someone' or 'not wanting to be a nobody' or 'wanting to avoid the
| bullying you used to get' or etc. The Feeling Good podcast[1] is
| a good audio introduction and has many examples, his book Feeling
| Great is more of a self-help style written introduction.
|
| The important question is not "what should I work on?" or "how
| should I decide and prioritise?", it is something more like "I
| have thought processes, they model imaginary futures and guide me
| away from predicted harm. Why do I have an imaginary future of
| not being enough of an expert and feel suffering in the present?
| Where did that thought come from and what is it doing for me, and
| do I want to keep it?".
|
| You can go with the desire for expertise part, "why do I need to
| be an expert in many things?" - whose respect are you trying to
| earn? Whose criticism are you trying to avoid? Who are you trying
| to avoid being like? What emotional disaster is that trying to
| protect you from? Or the other side, "what is so bad if I am not
| an expert in many things on my deathbed?", what's imagined social
| or emotional harm is that warning me of?
|
| [1] https://feelinggood.com/list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/
| mark_round wrote:
| Thank you for posting that. It came at a surprisingly opportune
| moment and I needed to read that. I'll be checking it out later
| tonight.
| mylons wrote:
| what an excellent reply. i've been working through a lot of
| these things in therapy, and hadn't thought of wanting to be an
| expert as a potential masking of the litany of feelings you
| mentioned. and thanks for the podcast recommendation
| carso wrote:
| You don't actually have to be an expert in everything that
| interests you: For example, you can enjoy music without ever
| becoming an expert musician. Many people are fascinated by the
| images coming from the JWST without becoming PhD level
| astronomers.
|
| If you think about it -- expertise isn't what makes a lifetime
| worth living. It's a sense that what you're doing has meaning:
| A meaningful life is what gives you that sense of
| "enough"-ness.
|
| Meaning can unfold in different ways, but part of it is about
| being "in the moment" -- While you're learning music, you have
| to find meaning in that journey without wishing you were
| findign time for astronomy (or being frustrated that you're not
| actually Mozart).
|
| I recommend the book "Why Smart People Hurt" which deals
| specifically with the challenges of smart people and finding
| meaning.
| rubslopes wrote:
| +1 for Dr. David Burns work. His book "Feeling Good" was the
| start of the cure of my anxiety; it was immensely helpful.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I can appreciate that it might be like that for some, but
| absolutely not for me.
|
| Deeper mathematics is meaningful to me for its beauty and the
| way it feels like arriving at some fundamental truth, for
| whatever value that can exist. Similar for deeper physics, it's
| very appealing to me to try to understand the world on some
| fundamental level, as much as we're capable. And I find it very
| satisfying solving a good math problem just on the cusp of my
| limits.
|
| Then higher up the chain is chemistry, electronics, robotics,
| software. I love seeing how we can put these things together
| for practical or just fun purposes, and I love when I put
| something together and get to see the end result working and
| doing something fun or useful. Doing the little lab experiments
| in my physics classes in college, it was really cool seeing the
| math on paper describe what was going on right in front of me,
| that I made predictions for. Something more practical to put my
| skills to use a while ago was the light setup I made with turn
| signals and some other safety features with an Arduino for my
| ebike. Admittedly I also enjoy when someone sees what I did and
| appreciates it but I also do it for myself. Then there's AI
| which brings up all kinds of philosophical questions.
|
| And on another plane I'm getting into the things that go along
| with homesteading like plant science and animal husbandry. Home
| grown food tastes better and it's another thing I just think is
| cool/fun.
|
| This all comes from some combination of appreciation, awe, fun,
| practicality, or just finding things cool - not seeking
| validation or running away from something. But I can still
| heavily sympathize with wishing I had a hundred lives to live,
| or got to live a thousand years in some kind of university, so
| I could fully appreciate all of these things. Right now I'm
| getting out of a long depressive slump and feeling like I've
| wasted too much time letting myself go intellectually, and
| wishing I'd dived even deeper on some of them in the past, but
| I'm feeling good about the future now.
| feet wrote:
| Plant science and husbandry builds upon
| chemistry/biochemistry
|
| While you may not be an expert in all of the fields you can
| definitely understand the basic rules that govern all of
| these things and build upon that. Mathematics describes all
| of it
| saltcured wrote:
| If you were standing at the entrance of a grand amusement
| park, would you feel despair that you have to choose which
| ride to take or excitement at having options? If the park
| were fantastically more grand, so you have no hope of
| sampling every amusement, does this somehow change your
| response? Your emotional valence here is your choice, not
| something intrinsic to the setting. That is what those
| cognitive behavioral therapists are trying to help with. But,
| they have to come up with some actionable instruction to
| convey it to us. I think you are arguing against the chosen
| rhetorical device rather than an actual principle.
|
| Whether it is rarefied academic pursuits, music and arts
| appreciation, friendships, love, delicious food, sex, or ...
| we have to decline a world of countless possibilities to
| engage what is in front of us. And even then, we need rest
| periods in order to fully appreciate those rare few branches
| we do take. You can't enjoy or pursue anything 24x7. The
| nature of our experience is inexorably tied to the exclusion
| of other non-experiences.
|
| In other words, life is a constant stream of decisions and
| branching points. The underlying angst of "not enough
| lifetime" is rooted, I think, in grief for these other paths
| not taken, for the loss of imagined alternatives. This is
| supported by the delusional idea that we could defer and
| return to every branch (given enough time). It ignores the
| ephemeral and limited nature of most opportunities and
| potential experiences, the necessity of closing one door to
| open another, and that most doors are never open to us
| (individually) to begin with.
|
| You wouldn't just need a hundred lives or a thousand years
| but some kind of combinatoric explosion of a Multiverse You,
| where you could explore every choice of collapsing decision
| point. But what does that even mean? I think it's another
| delusion about identity and the self to think that "you" can
| experience the different paths. You'd be many someones else.
| If you could somehow fuse them together into an experience,
| you've just added some kind of sci-fi "hive mind" to your
| experience. But wouldn't you wish you could have experienced
| those things as an individual...?
|
| To get stuck with this frustration is a failure to mourn. A
| failure to accept a finite life and get on with it. That
| leaves the grief stuck in the back of the mind. This is where
| philosophers of mind might tell you about desires as the
| source of suffering, etc. Where practitioners might propose
| moderation or the so-called middle path. Where the CBT folks
| might say you are on the path so you might as well learn to
| enjoy it, and offer a grab bag of tricks to help achieve
| that.
| wellpast wrote:
| I agree that it can be like this.
|
| Acquiring expertise is like climbing a mountain. There are
| revelations in the process, and it is like reaching a
| beautiful vista and the joy of seeing things expansively,
| from a height.
|
| I wish I could have this experience in other domains, and
| feel the constraint is just the physical and temporal bounds
| of life.
|
| Still, I recognize it as a fantasy to want these things. It's
| just simply not possible.
|
| I also recognize that there is something to the Eastern ideas
| of awareness and consciousness and that you perhaps you don't
| need to labor toward material expertise to experience life
| with expansive revelation?
| jmfldn wrote:
| This is a great and wise reply. I too suffer from what you're
| describing sometimes and I attribute it partly to these sorts
| of underlying emotional factors.
|
| The real key for me now is feeling that I am enough just as I
| am. I still strive in my career and in a few hobbies, that's
| still important, but I try hard not to identify too much with
| them. I fail quite often but it's liberating. I try to frame my
| passions as things with intrinsic rewards and not things that
| bolster my ego.
| rcornea wrote:
| Indeed, I am feeling that my lifetime may not be enough to
| learn all the things I am required to. The general feeling I
| have is that if I do not do this effort of gaining expertise, I
| am not fit for life.
|
| As a bit of context, I have been applying for work for about a
| year now as a software developer in the DACH (german-speaking
| EU), to be able to eke out a proper living and so far, every
| job inquiry, every human contact I have made boils down to "me
| not being good enough" in some respect. Even though I am sure
| to perform well, given standard compensation and a reasonable
| work environment.
|
| Everything starting from my education, my life, to my work
| experience has come under scrutiny and has become more
| fragmented and harder to coagulate as a coherent story as a
| result of this constant requirement for me needing "higher
| expertise to qualify".
|
| Over the course of my life, I have encountered hundreds of
| situations where as a result of my own lack of expertise in
| some domain, I was oblivious and even sometimes happy to accept
| completely unacceptable results, bad products/workmanship or
| horrible relationships. As a result of bad experiences
| thereafter, I found myself studying how to manage things on my
| own, as consistently endangering my very own life didn't appeal
| to me.
|
| So I feel myself pressured into studying more JS frameworks,
| more foreign languages, more programming languages, more
| engineering, more medicine, more chemistry, more psychology,
| more design science, more product science, more construction
| science, more _everything_ until I achieve a level of reliable
| expertise.
|
| At the same time, I am painfully aware of the fact that on my
| deathbed I will heavily resent the fact I had to spend all this
| time on personal expertise when probably "we could have had
| nice things" instead. To be honest, I feel resentment over the
| fact right now.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| "The general feeling I have is that if I do not do this
| effort of gaining expertise, I am not fit for life."
|
| That's really the more pressing issues that you need to work
| on.
|
| We all have blind spots about how things or people work, and
| we're all in a condition where "good enough" is almost always
| "good enough."
|
| If it helps, the slow process of remaining curious and caring
| about the people and work you encounter that will build
| expertise, and that's a thing that takes decades to show
| itself.
|
| And while we can do many things quite expertly in life, we
| can only do a few of these at a time.
|
| What you might understand is that, to take just one domain,
| people looking to hire programmers are looking for is someone
| who knows about a certain domain, so anything that you're
| doing outside of whatever narrow field you're discussing with
| a single person doesn't really matter as far as many people
| are concerned. T0 the person hiring a junior JS front-end
| developer, the chemistry skills isn't often relevant.
|
| Further, there is very little learning that a person can do
| outside of a job. That is a problem, but the way I personally
| solved it was to lower my expectations for jobs until I got
| one, and then keep looking for new ones until I found a
| position I have been quite happy in.
|
| However, all that is outside of the problem you are
| describing: simply being a person is enough to make you "fit
| for life".
|
| You don't need to be consistently grinding on learning new
| things if that's not an end-in-itself for you.
|
| Simply being good enough at one or two things is what almost
| all of us have to be okay with, and so what you might
| consider is which specific issues leading you to feeling this
| resentment.
|
| Are your expectations unreasonable? Are the people you're
| dealing with assholes?
|
| I suspect that answer to either or both of those questions my
| be yes; the fortunate thing is that either of those are
| easier and more useful to deal with than, say, becoming an
| expert physicist.
| sdwr wrote:
| I'm looking for a dev job now after a few years off... it's
| painful! I put my hope into each application, hearing nothing
| back most of the time stings. And all the while time is
| ticking.
|
| My instinct is to go learn more, make another project, stall
| it out and come back when I'm better prepared. I can't really
| see what one more project is going to do for me though.
|
| What feedback are you getting? Is it ghosting that you're
| interpreting as not being good enough?
| abvdasker wrote:
| What a great and thoughtful response. I really believe too many
| people -- some very ambitious and successful -- are being
| driven by unexamined pathology. I've seen too many examples of
| people who achieve their goals in terms of money or career or
| prestige or knowledge and remain miserable because they never
| took the time to ask themselves these questions.
| alfor wrote:
| It's almost a required condition.
|
| Without some kind of urge we could be happy doing nothing,
| coasting on what the previous generation did until our
| society collapse.
|
| "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times.
| Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times."
|
| -- G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain
| vasco wrote:
| As opposed to the rest that are miserable without getting the
| prestige? Everyone is motivated by fears, insecurities,
| wanting respect of peers, etc. Painting this all as mental
| illness is a bit stretched.
|
| People do stuff and then they die, so try to have fun, do
| stuff that you want to do and don't worry so much about what
| mysterious voodoo motivates what you do, who cares?
|
| If you make 10 people's lives better throughout your life,
| and you did that because of some childhood trauma that
| motivates you to be a savior or to get approval, who gives a
| shit? You still helped them.
| what-imright wrote:
| Sure all that money and respect and sex is just another
| burden you're better off without. You should just let go of
| the bad thoughts that make you desire expertise, that you
| could become a valued member of society, and instead find the
| happiness and love from within yourself and go get an ice
| cream cone at McDonalds. Cum-by-ya. Hallelujah. Whatever.
|
| It's amazing the cheap cop outs people settle for faced with
| failure at the most superficial level. The anxiety and fear
| of failure ties them up and eventually they give in having
| earned nothing from toiling and suffering as much or more
| than their successful peers. Ending jealous for the utmost
| irony.
|
| If only you could sit down and focus and complete one thing.
| magicroot75 wrote:
| In the past 6 months I've been struggling with a lot of anxiety
| and OCD. I've read 4 of his books. He's great.
| komadori wrote:
| In that case, first become an expert in life-span extension!
| charliewallace wrote:
| Immortality isn't happening, but you can significantly increase
| your health-span, to give you more time to keep learning cool
| fascinating stuff. There are steps you can take now to delay
| aging, based on well-run clinical trials, including
| supplementation with metformin (the TAME trial). Other measures
| are looking hopeful but are still being researched, including
| use of rapamycin (PEARL trial). Here's a good resource: a
| podcast by Dr. Peter Attia, also good for nerding out on lots
| of interesting topics. https://peterattiamd.com/podcast/
| dahart wrote:
| Are there any experts in life-span extension? Or, maybe what
| you meant was longevity extension - are there any experts in
| longevity extension? (Life-span extension means avoiding early
| death, longevity means being able to live longer than any
| humans have ever lived, say, 200 years or whatever.)
|
| I've read a bunch of pseudo-science and heard about so-called
| "experts" claiming it's possible and coming, but the field
| seems to attract charlatans promising immortality...
| maire wrote:
| If new things to be expert in proliferate faster than you can
| become an expert then life-span extension will not work. You
| would need to duplicate yourself each time there is a new thing
| you want to pursue. One you would be a concert violinist and
| the other you could cure the common cold.
| Aeolun wrote:
| That is a problem best solved _after_ you don't have to worry
| about the time involved any more.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _you would need to duplicate yourself each time there is
| a new thing you want to pursue_ "
|
| Much easier than inventing a duplicator is to imagine you
| have done this already, and the duplicates are all the other
| people in the world, busy being concert violinists and
| working on cold vaccines. What a relief to find that you no
| longer have to bother with such things.
| Bakary wrote:
| Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/863
|
| Honestly I would drop the ego that fuels this mindset and make an
| inventory of the topics you've actually pursued in life so far.
| That can be a good indication of the things you truly find
| valuable, and it can lead to uncomfortable realizations.
| Cameri wrote:
| I like being a jack-of-all-trades too, but it is taxing. My way
| of dealing with my insatiable thirst for knowledge is to pick a
| topic/problem/project or two at a time. It's hard but without
| focus I don't get anywhere.
| taylorius wrote:
| To quote my favourite poet, Tomas Transtromer, from his poem "The
| Blue House"
|
| ------
|
| "Thank you for this life! Still, I miss the alternatives. The
| sketches, all of them, want to become real."
|
| "Without really knowing it, we divine. Our life has a sister
| ship, following quite a different route".
| Jach wrote:
| Some decent advice here already, so I'll provide something from
| another angle by just picking something for you. That is, if you
| continue to be bothered by this, and think you have the actual
| capability to become an expert in multiple things (rather than a
| fanciful desire), first become an expert in longevity therapy
| research and help bootstrap yourself and the rest of the species
| into having enough time to pursue whatever you/others want.
| madiator wrote:
| Do you want to become an expert in very many different things?
| Just becoming an expert in one field can take a good fraction of
| your lifetime, so you may want to consider that.
|
| A useful mental model is to already see what you are good at, and
| draw (mentally) curves of your competence (I wrote about it in
| https://newsletter.smarter.blog/p/curves-of-competence). And then
| use it to figure out where to amplify.
|
| Also note that becoming an expert is a lot of hard work.
| aspyct wrote:
| I'm planning to live for 1000 years.
|
| Never been very good at planning, tho.
| mizzao wrote:
| I feel like the more things I learn, the faster I get at learning
| new things, and so the number of things I am able to get good at
| increases at a superlinear rate.
|
| So, I don't think it's really an either get good at A or get good
| at B. It feels more like either get good at A and B, or neither.
|
| This is my thesis, anyhow, for how polymaths emerge.
| rvba wrote:
| You can use money and fun to judge.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Obvious solution: become an expert in life extension.
| Zealotux wrote:
| Look into Oliver Burkeman's Time Management for Mortals, I
| personally listen to his audio series on the Waking Up app which
| you can try for free[1] (I'm not affiliated with them). You are a
| finite mortal, you can't do everything you want, but you have the
| power to choose.
|
| [1] https://dynamic.wakingup.com/pack/PKDAFBB
| philomathdan wrote:
| Becoming an expert in one thing takes a lot of time and effort,
| and this must be maintained even after reaching the goal. But
| getting a reasonable understanding of many things is not too bad.
| E.g. working through a freshman level physics text will give you
| a pretty good (or above average, at least) understanding of the
| field of physics, and this could be done in a span of months.
| Maybe try something like this for one subject after another. It
| could be that this amount of knowledge satisfies you for a given
| subject and you don't need to go further. But if it doesn't
| satisfy you, move on to more material. If there really are things
| you want to spend the time and energy on to reach expert level,
| you will naturally find them this way. And I suspect that list of
| things will be a lot smaller than when you started.
| barkingcat wrote:
| I am an expert in procrastination and I intend to grow myself to
| become the absolute best procrastinator in the world! I am not
| just an expert, but will be a world leading expert.
|
| I have 262,980 hours in actively practicing procrastination in my
| lifetime (30 solid years of procrastinating)
|
| This is my life goal and I am doing very well in my progress at
| the moment.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| First step after finding inspiration was to stop doing wage labor
| kkfx wrote:
| I follow needs and desires... For needs well, priority is
| needed... For desires since I have no specific time goal I can
| follow momentary willingness, stop and restart as much as I like.
| luplex wrote:
| I think this is an unhealthy desire, as it's impossible to
| achieve. You should replace it with its source, like "I want to
| provide wisdom to my community", and then let that guide you in
| prioritizing your time
| srvmshr wrote:
| I think the OP knows this and thats why he has asked the
| community. So brushing off by a casual "duh, grow up" isn't the
| way to go
|
| A few people I talked to in life, have this love for learning
| everything to the point they feel "afraid to die" before
| mastering something. They aren't Einsteins - they know that.
| But having that insatiable curiosity to learn something through
| & through. It is sad to be empathetic but also a revelation how
| passionate some folks are. And although its a terrible plan by
| design, it personally keeps them going on & on. I think what
| they need to understand is "how much expertise" is good enough.
| Finding inner balance is as important as finding expertise.
| pitsnatch wrote:
| "A few people I talked to in life, have this love for
| learning everything to the point they feel "afraid to die"
| before mastering something."
|
| Damn, that describes me pretty much. Though I just feel sad
| that I'll die because I can't learn everything that I'm
| curious about. I felt this much stronger in college. Now not
| so much. Just trying to survive now.
| srvmshr wrote:
| Trust me. You aren't alone. And there is nothing to feel
| bad about it. I have it to some degree (although a bit
| unidimensional - I just want to finish all my purchased
| math & engineering books). That brought me to the
| conversation with others in the first place. Keep the
| curiosity alive. Its a powerful, motivating force. Just
| don't get too anxious.
|
| One way I think about it, is that someone will pick up the
| torch - someone who follows my work, blog, maybe my
| children. I did that for my father's dreams. If not, you
| are long dead already & it won't matter. That gives a sense
| of closure
| pitsnatch wrote:
| That's very insightful.
|
| "Keep the curiosity alive. Its a powerful, motivating
| force. Just don't get too anxious."
|
| You're so right about that. I just realized I had much
| more zest for life when I was more curious. I should try
| to cultivate more curiosity.
| wccrawford wrote:
| Yeah, my first thought what that it would be better to focus on
| what you want to do, rather than what you want to know.
| charliewallace wrote:
| Focusing on doing something is like having a goal, which is
| known to be good for mental health. It's OK if the goal
| changes from time to time. There's a really great book about
| how having a goal helped people survive the concentration
| camps in WW2, called "Man's search for meaning", highly
| recommended reading.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning
| hprotagonist wrote:
| depth first search is a perfectly cromulent way to live.
|
| my heuristic: does this work serve others? do i have to struggle
| at wanting to do it or do i struggle to stop working?
| orasis wrote:
| What brings you joy on a daily basis? I'm a black belt in Jiu
| Jitsu and as my mastery continues to deepen it just becomes even
| more fun and rewarding and I now have a global network of
| extraordinary people. It's been well with the thousands of hours.
| emerged wrote:
| Embrace the concept of a talent stack. List the things you love
| and/or are talented in. Enumerate subsets of this list to find
| things which combine as many of these things as possible.
|
| This maximizes the amount of what you love that you get to do,
| and it puts you in a niche where you are uniquely well suited.
| oumua_don17 wrote:
| Most people overestimate what they can do in one year, and
| underestimate what they can do in ten years. - Derek Sivers [1]
|
| [1] https://sive.rs/donkey
| hutrdvnj wrote:
| I had this feeling during my 20s, but now in my 30s I just relax
| and live my life without such thought. I have kids that add value
| to my life and I work as SRE on k8s clusters. Just relax and do
| whatever you want to do, even if you just do it for a few days,
| weeks or months, you gain experience that can be useful for all
| sorts of things. No need to become an absolute super nerd in just
| one tiny topic.
| bitcurious wrote:
| Assuming "expert" is a comparative scale, look for intersections.
| You might be a decent rock climber and a decent data scientist,
| but the world authority on data science applied to route planning
| on a mountainside.
| rc_mob wrote:
| I don't lol. I just try know my physical and mental limits (know
| thyself). then I try to do things one at a time, and go until I'm
| satisfied or tired or hit my limits. Its just life you do what
| you want on your 80 years.
|
| Annoying thing is that my limits have changed as I got older and
| had children. So I often had to reassess the time that I can put
| into my interests. And ok that is life we all get old.
| exabrial wrote:
| I'm the same way. My only piece of advice: don't let 'sucking at'
| at a hobby preclude you from garnering enjoyment from it!
|
| Truly the journey is the destination in the human experience.
| nonoesp wrote:
| "Be so good they can't ignore you."
| barrysteve wrote:
| Grace
| aputsiak wrote:
| Get a paid job with experts who enjoy sharing their knowledge and
| thought processes. Work hard and gain expertise, then share it
| yourself. Transition from one domain to a related, or step up a
| higher level. That's the money part. Make sure to have a few,
| true hobbies with fun, dedicated, and serious folks. But most
| importantly, be an expert in living a fulfilling, wholesome life
| with people where love and friendship is the main theme.
| abeppu wrote:
| The threads in here about honestly confronting the finite time
| available and defining goals and understanding why you want
| expertise are both reasonable and important to think through.
|
| But in terms of actually picking what to focus on, I'd suggest
| looking for under-explored intersections of domains that are
| interesting to you. This is for two reasons:
|
| - If the particular intersection is not field with a large number
| of people doing real work in it, the "bar" for being an "expert"
| is lower. In a well-developed area, even after doing quite a lot
| of learning, one might not be an "expert".
|
| - The intersection can give you a view on those adjacent fields
| which may reveal other interesting opportunities, and may make
| you at least fluent or productive in those areas.
| iRomain wrote:
| Great advice
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