The Future of Generalist Work

“The beginner chases the right answers.

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.

The Imperfectionist: Doing things is what counts

“Here’s what I mean: everyone seems to yearn for the productivity technique or life philosophy or set of personal rules that will cause them to do more writing, launch a business, be a better listener, or finally start meditating. But nothing beats actually doing a bit of the thing to reinforce to yourself that you’re capable of making progress on it. The best way to convince a five-year-old that enjoyable leisure doesn’t require addictive technology is to spend a few hours demonstrating that it doesn’t; and the best way to prove to yourself that you can add words to the manuscript of your novel is to add a few.”

While frameworks can offer valuable perspectives and guide decision-making, rigid adherence to them can lead to tunnel vision and unhelpful outcomes. Successful decision-making often requires a blend of framework-guided analysis and intuitive judgment, where the needs of both the business and the customer are carefully considered.

Lenny Rachitsky • Twitter’s former Head of Product opens up: being fired, meeting Elon, changing stagnant culture, building consumer product, more | Kayvon Beykpour

Model managers of tomorrow will need to learn the same things. They’ll need to know which AI models to use for which tasks. They’ll need to be able to quickly evaluate new models that they’ve never used before to determine if they’re good enough. They’ll need to know how to break up complex tasks between different models suited to each piece of wor... See more

Dan Shipper • The Knowledge Economy Is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy

Here are eight imperatives—all of them drawing strength and sustenance from the humanities:

We need a way of defining and pursuing progress that doesn’t reduce that concept to something that only comes from a digital device.

We desperately need access to values and wisdom that aren’t corrupted by the relentless financial metrics and imposed flavor-of

Ted Gioia • The Real Crisis in Humanities Isn't Happening at College

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.

bbc • Why Some People Are Impossibly Talented

Each drop is creative and rebellious, winking to the world that capitalism is a necessary joke. They do all of this with a team of 34 people, most of whom are generalists with no background in making physical goods.

Evan Armstrong • The Art of Scaling Taste

The magic that MSCHF makes with generalists is the stuff of legend

What else has been hidden by summary? What thoughts must we resist abridging? Those giant sequoias echo a reminder to ask ourselves, what are the unseen things today that could be growing?

Simon Sarris • Long Distance Thinking

If AI is the ultimate summarizer, and we transition our human processes to include AI to strip away context, what will we be missing?

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 responsibil... 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.