The Philomath's Dilemma V2

I want to add to the previous post, Focus, after getting a formative piece of wisdom from my brilliant friend and mentor. He is originally from Nigeria and has a powerful life story that he humbly hides behind an utterly selfless and kind demeanor. He's a Harvard-educated M.D. and Ph.D. neurosurgeon turned neuroradiologist in SF. His intentional advice and unintentional guidance have helped me to enhance my way of thinking, extend my mind, and further embrace my innate curiosity. This particular piece of advice directly relates to my cognitive dissonance I reflected on in the Focus post.

He gave me Homo Deus, a book I'm currently reading which is the sequel to my favorite book, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Inside the cover, he wrote a note:

"Kori, Maintain a passion for learning...someday you may come to realize that all knowledge is one."

I later asked him what he meant by "all knowledge is one" and he answered in the following beautifully worded and insightful prose:

"Reflect on that question ten years hence…

Networking is a fundamental operating principle of the human brain. All knowledge within the brain is based on networking. Thus, any one piece of information can be potentially linked with any other. Indeed, the unconscious brain operates on this principle all the time, and creativity can merely be thought of as the formation of novel original linkages.

Thus, rather than training oneself in narrow specialties, one should therefore train oneself to think in different ways about knowledge and how it should be used.

Philosophers like Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas observed centuries ago that knowledge is a unity with everything potentially connected with everything else..."

So maybe my unrelenting thirst for knowledge and trying new things truly is better than focusing on one specialty or skill. If you think of it in relation to the way our brains work, I'm adding novel connections that I didn't have and strengthening ones that I do have - growing new branches and thickening old branches. My mentor's point is that having a more diverse network of linkages allows for easier lightbulb moments and bursts of creativity. 

The Philomath's Dilemma

You've likely heard that focusing on one industry, job, goal, dream, idea, or whatever is better for a career. Having one thing you’re passionate about or interested in and spearheading towards it, constantly trying to grow and improve in that space. I know I have. And I don’t just hear that - I see evidence of its value. With all the incredibly impressive and successful people I’ve met or have been exposed to in SF, so many have focused on one industry or role, and climbed their way up the latter in that space. David Heinemeier Hanson has said he used to be bad at programming and hated it. But he stuck with it and consistently worked at it because it made his life more efficient and his tasks less repetitive by building the algorithms he used. Now, he's the creator of a web development framework called Ruby on Rails.

And the fact that these people reach success from their grit and persistence makes sense - the 10,000-hour rule, right? The more you dedicate yourself to one thing, the better you become. The more consistent you are (doing something aimed towards that goal nearly every day) and the more grit you have (sticking to that goal despite not being good yet) is what got these people where they are today. And it’s often said that being an expert at one thing is more useful or marketable than being good at an amalgam of things.

The trouble with this path to success is that it doesn’t allow me to express and apply my array of interests and curiosities. I don’t think I have one lone superpower or passion, I think I have multiple powers and many interests. And it doesn’t stop there. I love learning about new things, expanding on those many interests, and hearing what others are passionate about and researching and trying those things. I love fitness, health, and technology;  I’m fascinated in what makes businesses thrive and what makes a successful entrepreneur; I enjoy reading, riding my motorcycle, traveling, exploring SF cocktail bars, meeting new people and hearing their stories. 

My side projects have included writing a product blog which interviewed the experts at startups I’ve met in SF, writing a fitness blog, drafting an online health consulting business, building new app feature mockups and PRDs for Airbnb and ClassPass, developing a product strategy for the First Republic Bank CIO to better target millennials, teaching Insanity classes, and it continues. Some were successful, some failed, some are still in progress. I have so much on my mind, so much I want to do, and instead of picking one - I do it all. 

Is this detrimental? Is my lack of focus going to hold me back from becoming a marketable expert in one of these many passions? It may seem like my goals sound high-level, ambiguous, or formless (when people ask what I want to do, I say I want to be a creative visionary/strategist on a product I care about with brilliant people in an industry I believe in). And this may be true but I don’t think it’s detrimental. Each one of these micro-projects helps me grow and iterate. I learn what works and what doesn’t, and more importantly for me - what I enjoy and what I don’t.

It's easy to get jaded hearing about others’ success stories and start thinking ‘why aren’t I doing that?’ and then proceed to research it and wonder if that’s something I’d want to do. And that has increased ten-fold since moving to SF. This place is chock full of brilliant, scrappy people with interesting and powerful success stories. It can get daunting hearing about all of these. But it's beneficial as well. It's like having other people try things for you - I can internalize what they've learned, what's succeeded or failed, and what their own iterations have been in their business. And I can apply that knowledge to my own career decisions.

There's an important piece to all this - there isn’t one secret sauce or defined path to becoming successful. Another thing I’ve learned from meeting all these successful entrepreneurs, founders and experts in SF is that every single one forged their own path. And each individual holds a different meaning of successful. So I remind myself not to get disheartened or overwhelmed when I hear of a powerful fitness entrepreneur’s story and realize that it doesn’t align with my life path thus far in any way. That’s ok. I have my own path.