The Future of Generalist Work
Job titles are just the most visible ladder of them all. It’s interesting that pompous executive job titles were invented during the Victorian era. This is when we started the trend of calling a cleaner a hygiene technician. A bin man became a waste management and disposal technician. Later on, a call-center worker became a communications... See more
Anne-Laure Le Cunff • The tyranny of job titles: from vanity growth to personal growth
Generalists have shirked the the notion of a true job title to fit their work and have followed the thread of providing value and making an impact. No wonder there’s a group of talented professionals hiding in plain sight given how constricting the traditional job titles have become in affirming our professional worth.
The tools that are available to each of us are so powerful, so varied and so complex that even the free ones are ignored or misunderstood. We’re too busy doing work to get much done.
And so we end up with the convenient and sexy tools (like the smartphone you might be reading this on) and fail to do the few hours or days of training we might need to... See more
And so we end up with the convenient and sexy tools (like the smartphone you might be reading this on) and fail to do the few hours or days of training we might need to... See more
PW 4: Productivity and tools
As I discovered, talent and drive aren’t enough. If anything, talent can make finding ideas feel more daunting because it increases the number of available opportunities.
Ruchi Sanghvi • To Go 0 to 1, First Go -1 to 0
These passion job organizations are burnout factories. Every year, a new crop of eager recruits comes in, grateful to have landed a job doing work “they love” — and every year, a significant percentage of the existing workforce churns out. Some have been there that single year, others for five. They leave not because they’re not good “fits” for the... See more
Anne Helen Petersen • When Your Profession is On Fire
On that note: hot off the presses is yet another study making the case that optimizing for youth sports performance undermines longer-term development. I highlight that specific theme because I think it’s the fundamental idea that runs through every page of Range (but that would have made for a less snazzy subtitle): short- and long-term... See more
David Epstein • Caitlin Clark's Not-So-Surprising Childhood
Another study on the power of generalist work
Mastery is not only about getting better at your craft, but also about finding ways to eliminate the obstacles, distractions, and other annoyances that prevent you from working on your craft.
Top performers find ways to spend as much time as possible on what matters and as little time as possible on what doesn't. It is not someone else's... See more
Top performers find ways to spend as much time as possible on what matters and as little time as possible on what doesn't. It is not someone else's... See more
Superhuman
What is generalist mastery? Connecting the right dots, realizing that some dots matter and other dots don’t. Not every dot should be connected.
the people who can start things will be the major beneficiaries in the coming years, because the barrier is no longer knowledge or skills, it’s courage.
Superhuman
“Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.”
Evan Armstrong • Want to Build? Technical Excellence Won’t Be Enough.
Steve Jobs
