The Future of Generalist Work
This has been the core question I’ve sat with for the last decade—how to balance money and meaning on the entrepreneurial path. And there are three archetypal ways that I’ve seen people approach the question:
- The deferred life plan
- Being bivocational
- Choosing to integrate
Casey Rosengren • The 3 Ways to Balance Money and Meaning
Different backgrounds, different views, different experiences. The best teams are diverse. These are the ingredients that spark innovation.
Daniel Rizea • Top 5 Learnings After Mentoring 100 Startups
Diversity of backgrounds can also mean diversity of generalist vs. specialist skillsets. Generalists become multi-functional, bringing domain expertise from corners that you might least expect it.
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 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
Taking a nontraditional path will force you to grapple with what matters
The greatest benefit of a nontraditional path is that you have to figure out what you care about. Rather than an employer telling you what you should value, you have to do the hard work of determining what you value for yourself. This may sound self-evident, but in a world... See more
The greatest benefit of a nontraditional path is that you have to figure out what you care about. Rather than an employer telling you what you should value, you have to do the hard work of determining what you value for yourself. This may sound self-evident, but in a world... See more
Simone Stolzoff • In Praise of the Meandering Career
many of society’s most pressing challenges – such as climate change – require highly creative problem-solving that crosses multiple domains, and polymaths may be the best people to find those solutions.
David Robson • Why Some People Are Impossibly Talented
If consumer behavior is evolving as a result of technology, businesses either compete to get ahead of it, they perpetually react to it, or they belittle it. One of the most problematic aspects around digital maturity is that technology is both part of the solution and also part of the problem.
Brian Solis • Digital Darwinism: How Disruptive Technology Is Changing Business for Good
“The beginner chases the right answers.
The master chases the right questions.”
The master chases the right questions.”
James Clear • 3-2-1: On hard conversations, how to ruin a good strategy, and asking for what you want
Generalists are masters in asking the right questions.
My aha moment of the value of first principles thinking was when I was at Dropbox. We would hire a ton of really smart people that had never done sales and had them do sales. There are a lot of disadvantages to that, but I do think it led to a ton of innovation. That's how we got our very innovative go-to market motions because a lot of those... See more