In Defense of the Generalist

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I was taking my son on a long stroller walk the other day and decided to listen to a Freakonomics podcast. I was struck by this interview with Caitlin Doughty, who went to work at a crematorium just for kicks after she graduated from college. From the interview:

“I didn’t know how long I would be cremating bodies for, but I thought it would be a funny cocktail party story 10 years from now. And my friends would raise their martinis and go, ‘Did you know Caitlin used to work at a crematory? Isn’t that wild?’ But then, I got into it and I loved it. …That was 13 years ago. And here I still am as a funeral home owner and part of the funeral industry.”

She ends up having some truly fascinating stories and insight, but you’ll have to listen to the podcast for that. The reason I bring that story up is to illustrate that sometimes we don’t know what we’re going to like until we try it. That’s the beauty of generalization. With the right base of knowledge and an interest in learning, generalists can get good enough to be dangerous at a lot of things. I also think that doing something because it seems fun and interesting, or because it would be good fodder for a story, is as good a reason as most to pursue something.

Lots of people know what they want to do from the very beginning, and that’s awesome for them. Specialization, I’m told, is what makes real dough in this day and age (think: surgeons, programmers, interior designers who build gyms on rich peoples’ yachts (seriously?), etc.). And though I’m touting generalists and all the beauty that comes along with them, to be fair to specialists, I wouldn’t want just anybody designing my yacht’s gym; some things are certainly better left to the pros.

I suppose I was just never one of those people who knew what they wanted to do for a career. Sure, I have a white-collar job where I make money. Lots of my coworkers call our line of work their “career,” so let the record show that I have some bona fides in acting like a productive human that some might label a specialist based on the niche of my paid work. A degree from a liberal arts college certainly didn’t help much from a specialization perspective. If you search the Google-y device for the best jobs for a liberal arts degree, you get such narrow specialties as “manager,” “sales,” “teacher,” and “research analyst.” Interviewing for these positions, I imagine the generalist liberal arts graduate saying, “I can be good at lots of stuff! Give me a shot!” In all honesty, it kind of worked for me.

But have you ever known someone who is so specialized, so good at what they do, but so myopic in their focus and interest that they’re just not that interesting to hang out with? Their sense of accomplishment, source of livelihood, and overall personal well-being is so inexorably linked to one job or career field that it becomes a significant risk. Now, life isn’t, or shouldn’t be, all about minimizing risk, but what happens to that cutting edge abacus designer when the calculator comes along? She’d better ensure she has developed some other skills or interests that are transferrable. When she gets kicked out of her apartment because she can’t pay rent, she’ll be a lot less likely to have a friend offer a place to stay because she’s just not that interesting at cocktail parties. Speaking of which, maybe she could call Caitlin Doughty—our out-of-work abacus designer is probably more interesting to talk to than Caitlin’s typical clientele.

From a risk perspective, being a generalist can have some pretty awesome benefits. Have you ever read the profiles of people on CNBC who left their stable careers to focus full-time on their “side hustle” that began generating enough money to live on?* You know the ones: “Mother of 5 Quits Sales Exec Job, Takes Baby Slingshot Side Hustle To New Heights.”** Those folks tend to be generalists. They developed an interest in something outside of their designated career specialty and pursued it. Pretty great to have the freedom to leave one job for something else entirely, isn’t it?

This kind of generalization doesn’t have to be confined solely to money-making endeavors, either. I’m a big fan of self-reliance. Mr. Money Mustache has a great article on this, if you’ve not read it. Broadening vice narrowing the range of your daily work indeed produces more human resiliency. I think back to buying my first home almost fifteen years ago and the skills I learned then (plaster wall repair, basic trim work) which have since snowballed to a real knowledge base of home repair and remodeling today (building walls and structures complete with plumbing, HVAC, and electrical work). Many Americans tend to outsource this kind of work, but I think learning about it has paid significant dividends over the years in terms of (1) money saved, (2) the fanciness of renovations we’ve been able to afford, and (3) keeping me out of trouble. Lots of places don’t have 24/7 on-call plumbers to fix a leaking toilet or Geek Squad in their local area to come and fix their Google-y device when it stops Googling. Little, learned skills end up saving the day pretty frequently.

This is also not a defense of never developing any depth in any field of interest. We humans benefit in a significant way when we realize that there is more knowledge to be gained in most fields than we are able to comprehend. By going beyond just a cursory look into a discipline, we go from realizing how much we think we know to realizing how much we don’t know. Paradoxically, it usually takes a very smart person to realize how incompetent they are. This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect (read about it’s origin here), summarized in the graphic below:  

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Gaining this understanding of the Dunning-Kruger effect enables the generalist to become self-aware. At some point in our lives, most of us have probably been at the peak of “Mount Stupid.” Did you get a semester or two of economics under your belt and think the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is an idiot and you could do better? That’s Mount Stupid. Did you install some Ikea cabinetry and now think you could dabble as a professional carpenter? That’s Mount Stupid. Buy a stock that appreciated and are now considering day-trading? Mount Stupid. You get it. The more you learn about a topic and realize there are volumes upon volumes of theories, standards, schools of thought within a discipline, etc, the more you realize how little you really know. And that’s fine! This is the level of generalist that’s the most interesting.

The bottom line for me is that generalists tend to be interesting because they’re more interested. Do I need my surgeon to be a great person to have a beer with? Nope. Do you think she’d be better at patient care if she were? Probably. Having more interests and hobbies is rarely a detriment. And that’s why this blog is unfocused. Generalist. Hopefully… interesting. Regardless of which side of this you fall on, I hope you consider investing more time and effort into your interests, hobbies, and passions. I’d prefer to have more funny cocktail party stories to hear.

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*As an aside, the term “side hustle” drives me nuts. As Roger Patterson writes, this is entrepreneurship. 

**Obviously I made this up. What is a baby slingshot? Is it a slingshot used by babies? Is it a slingshot used to sling babies? The title implies heights is a double entendre for the business and the product, so I’m leaning toward the latter… If anyone does start a baby slingshot company, I will not be held liable for any injuries. That said, if it’s profitable, I would like a cut.