Are you a generalist or a specialist?

Ever find yourself in situations where you are expected to be a fountain of knowledge about all subjects under the sun? It’s been happening to me more and more often. The good thing is that you? end up knowing a bit about everything.? The other day, after buying Epson RX640, I went off hunting for somewhere to buy CD Labels. Turns out I found a great site called Buskerdoo CD Labels that do a whole selection of CD lables, DVD insets, CD sleeves and a whole bunch of other CD/DVD related paraphenelia. The good thing is, I won’t need to search for them again, because now I know.

There are downsides of course. This morning I went to the gym, for instance; and instead of doing my nomal workout I ended up fixing their computer. It was relatively straighforward, putting some antispyware on their box, running Windows Update and a few other clean up tasks, but it meant that I ended up playing with computers instead of pumping iron.

Sometimes I feel a bit uncomfortable in not having as much depth of knowledge in certain areas as I would like. It’s nice to be a specialist sometimes, being the “go to” guy about a particular topic. Still, the bottom line is I like knowing a bit about everything. Generalists rock!

6 comments

  1. I would much rather be a specialist than a generalist. Although life is simpler for a generalist, it pays off in the end to know a lot about something.

  2. Just curious how you find the print quality of the Epson RX640. I have an older version of the printer and was looking to upgrade it.

  3. @Karen: Yeay, the printer is just brilliant. Print quality is superb and the photos it produces are just astounding. Would recommend it to anyone!

  4. Is their a hybrid – between generalists and specialists. I guess it’s relative, depending on the individual?

  5. In Lord Byron’s Don Juan, we see Don Juan’s mother as this sort of intellectual surface individual. She is described as knowing a little bit about a lot of things, but very nothing of depth about anything.

    I knwo this is not exactly true of me, but I often FEEL this way. I have so much going on inside my head.

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