2015-12-09
7 分钟Hey, this week's good Life project riff is called in defense of mastery.
So there's been a lot of talk over the last couple of years, really, that I've heard.
It started a lot in the blogosphere.
I hear it all over social media.
I hear it a lot in the world of entrepreneurship, especially sort of micro entrepreneurs, solo entrepreneurs, especially in the space of people who consider themselves creative pros and artists.
And it's all about having the freedom to put together a basket of interests, to pursue a wide variety of things simultaneously, and to figure out how to do them in a way and on a level that really allows us to potentially mold together a decent living out of all these different things simultaneously.
So the freedom to pursue multiple interests is, and this is sort of one of the arguments that I've really put forth strongly, is, in the end, it's the ultimate quest.
Deep knowledge and total devotion to the pursuit of mastery in a single field has even been to a certain extent, demonized.
And sort of the pursuit of being the generalist, as that's the future, has been something that I keep hearing more and more and more.
And I wonder if that's true.
And I wonder, even if it's true for some, if that should really be the general proclamation for all.
You know.
Here's where I raise my hand and say, I may have even talked about pursuing multiple things at once in the past, but increasingly, I wonder if part of what's going on here is that people, and let me even rephrase that, that I have not been willing to endure the intense work, the fierce discipline, and the willingness to embrace the risk needed to walk away, or at least temporary, shelve certain ingredients in my interest basket in the name of becoming extraordinary at one.
And then you add to this, there's a term, a phrase that's become seriously used these days, and you have to ask why?
And that term is fomo.
If you haven't heard it before, it's short for fear of missing out.
There's this massive, massive sense of FOMO.
And you add that to the basket of, well, but if I give up one of the five things that I want to do, maybe I'm going to miss out on what that might give me.
So I'm really beginning to challenge the assumption that the desire to piece together a multi tentacled living is really about freedom, about the freedom to do all these things.
And I'm wondering if blending interest is at least for some, if not for most, really the ultimate manifestation, not of freedom, but of fear and constraint.