People
expect from us to be great in every single field, but we all know it is
impossible. And here comes the question, it is better to be an expert in one
narrow filed, or be a jack of all trades and have skills in every discipline?
The first
question that I have asked myself was:
how can you master a skill when you don’t focus on one thing that you are
really into? Imagine what you would achieve if you only paid attention to what you really wanted.
That
was actually my first impression. But then I thought that it’s only one side of
the issue.
There
is a phrase that responds to my problem:
"Jack
of all trades, master of none,
Certainly
better than a master of one”
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/114067803037613174/
I
think that it’s good to know fundamentals of some fields, you somehow belong
to. For example, when you run your own company,
I think it is not really necessary to have perfect accounting skills, but it is
good to know how it works and what is important. But when it comes to more
precise elements – it is way better to have a professional
accountant to deal with it.
As I am a graphic designer I will
recall an example connected with this
field. How much easier it
is to talk to the client who knows how the industry works, who knows what current trends are or that in Photoshop you simply cannot “turn an elephant around to see its front”.
Source: boredpanda.com
Moreover,
it is way easier when you have at least some additional knowledge to express
your ideas better, more precise. It also helps you appreciate more things,
because you understand them better.
I
think that the golden mean here is to master a field that you want to be an
expert in, but still be open to learn new things
from others or in your free time. Unfortunately we have very limited time and
we cannot learn everything we want to. So still, we need to make a choice.
What
is yours? Are you more into mastering one field
or becoming a jack of all trades?
Comments
But here comes this awful question – is it possible to master all of the things that you mentioned? Or you can only be master of one to be the "real master"? I think that when you focus only on one narrow field it's simply getting boring, so it's cool to have something interesting that might be stepping stone for your main skill :D
Besides that you have to focus on things directly interfering with you daily activities, you also have to focus on activities to care about yourself - meaning your physical and psychological health.
First of all it would be very boring to focus just on one thing in life. It would maybe make you an expert in this field, but you would also be dumb in other areas. You could easily become a boring person. Moreover it would be unhealthy for you as for human being to
push yourself to do that.
The other reason is many things in real life require focusing on other things and topics. It is simply not possible to focus on just one area, as there are many others related. Understanding one area deeply means you also have to posses knowledge going beyond just that one area.
And the last idea is that life is too short and too long to do just one thing in your lifetime. On one hand you could always practice the same thing, but in my opinion every field can be mastered in the duration smaller than your life span, and it would not require 100% focus all the time. It would be just too much.
It’s hard to say what is better. It depends on discipline. If you are musician it’s highly recommended to be master of one. But if you work in industry when technology changes all the time is rather better to be jack of all trades.
I am still open to every opportunity but currently I am mastering web development in ASP.NET-MVC. As you stated this is important to know essentials from multiple domains if you run your business to not let your employees cheat on you.
IT specialist suppose to have broad interests, besides it is healthy to not specialise in IT only. For instance if all computers blew up all of the sudden I would run a pro bicycle store. Even if computers are safe if you work for company like LUXMED and create web service for them you need to know more than thing or two about the health business.
However, I think I agree with most of the people's comments - it's the best to be good in some field, but not to limit youself to it. You can't predict the future - maybe in some time you'll need to change your job and use different skills?
Besides, I agree it would be extremely boring for me to just pick one field and stick to it - I would grow tired of it very quickly.
Dominika, Natalka what thing would you like to do and try?
I believe it's better to be a jack of all trades and, if you have an opportunity, try out everything you can throughout your lifetime. This way you can find out what is really interesting for you and what you're good at. Even if you won't be an expert, you still get to learn important things, something that will perhaps change your life someday. And if not, at least you'll have some cool stories to tell! :)
yourself only in this areas. It is important to be well-read, it's very broadens to our horizons. Good practice is to change your job max in 4-5 year. It gives you opportunities to develop your skills, you won't get bored.
I think that I’m rather “Jack of all trades, master of none,” I think that is neither good nor bad.
At work, even if you work in your field of expertise, you will very often find yourself out of your comfort zone and you just have to be able to handle those situations.
It is of course useful to have knowledge from other fields, but I don't think you should spread yourself too thin.
Best way in my opinion is to master (or at least try) one field and gradually educate yourself with fields related to it or fields that are helpful in your career.
You will just forget useless information really fast. On the other hand if you learn only the basics of important things then you can always learn more as needed to accomplish things you want. Remember - getting the knowledge without it's use later is just a pointless task. We should focus on actually doing things, not just learning things for no good reason just to feel satisfaction that we 'know everything'.
It often happens that a vast knowledge on various subjects may be helpful in solving the problem of a specific field.