i respect the ability to focus single-mindedly on one thing, and also think some people work better when exposed to new perspectives
referencing leaning into strengths, i have always thought that people should do what is right for what they feel / what their specific situation is. i have always been skeptical of generic prescriptive advice and in favor of knowing yourself better and leaning into what works for you
that being said, some people work well with a singular obsessive focus, while the majority of others benefit from diverse perspectives and tying lots of frameworks across different fields together. you study history, and it gives you a unique perspective on what makes for successful startups / you study journalism, and it teaches you how to ask great questions in vc pitches / you study psychology, and it teaches you how to evaluate people in your business job. it seems like some of the best thinkers of all time have been multi-disciplinary, integrating concepts from seemingly unrelated fields to each other. in cases where people might ask “why are you learning about x, it’s so unrelated from your current thinking about y,” a pushback would be, “how can you know that they are so unrelated”
it seems like there are many concepts that show up in a lot of apparently unrelated fields. concepts like:
- people at the top of their fields seem to be disproportionally competitive
- find the best people to work with, everything else figures itself out
- society / our brains reward short-term achievements, but discipline compounds
- “investing” is more similar than it appears across industries / stages / asset classes / etc
- etc
“renaissance men” used to be highly respected, now it seems like society glamorizes the “cracked” people (cracked engineers, cracked growth hackers, singularly-focused investors / bankers / designers / etc). it makes sense - if you’re looking to hire resources, you should probably hire the best ones. if i were to start a project, i’d look for people who are multi-disciplinary - they spike in one area extremely well but also are able to bring in concepts from other fields to make them even more cracked at their main discipline (which is more rare than i thought)
i saw a tweet recently about “learning compounding” - the more you learn, the more concepts you are able to connect across the things you’re learning