Is it ok to be a jack of all trades?

‘Focus is the Key’, is a phrase we have been hearing right since our childhood. But did that come with a guarantee clause of success? The answer is no. Focus is just an ingredient to the recipe of success, but people have tasted better dishes without it as well.

People like Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo Da Vinci, Rabindranath Tagore, etc. had a wide reach amongst people due to their involvement in multiple streams such as arts, mathematics, science, etc. After years of their efforts, people now call them polymaths. A polymath, to describe, is a person whose knowledge spans a significant number of subjects. However, being known as a polymath isn’t an easy journey. People who like experimenting in different domains of work often get criticized and are asked to focus on limited things. However, the very same habit is adored as a ‘Managing Skill’ if the person becomes successful or famous.

There may be thousands of rulebooks to success, but none guarantees it.  However, for a polymath, some common factors increase the probability of it. These factors are one’s skillsets, habits, current state, and the approach of mixing them up. We may be confused about our current state if it is going to lead to a better future or not. In that case, we can ask a few questions to ourselves to have a quick reality check.

1)      How focused our defocused approach is?
A lot of us love multi-tasking. It could be about practicing multiple things parallelly or about practicing them in a period. Both approaches are fine till the time we either obtain the right output or enjoy the whole process. We must rethink if neither of the two is in place.

2)     How well our ability to connect the dots is?
The things you do may or may not be related to each other. To have the best efficiency, a link between these activities is an important factor. There is always a way to connect them and those who do, get the best out of it. We can take an example of a financial consultant whose work-life is busy but still practices arts. A combination to mentor a group about how work life can be managed with a hobby is a great example of connecting the dots (you know how well these mentors charge!)

3)     How sincere are we to ourselves?
Many times, people think that multitasking is fun and attracts applause from others. This leads them to try out various options, sometimes uncomfortable ones as well. They continue doing them because then if they had left, they would have been laughed upon for doing so midway. Another scenario is when people pretend to be busy. There is enough fancy material available to show the world how busy we are. It is just that sooner do we realize that it is ok to bluff the world but could be disastrous to ourselves, better it is.
 

4)     How do we define success for ourselves?
One question that can turn any table around is this. The most relevant unit to measure success is satisfaction, the level of which varies on an individual basis. It could be through money, power, fame, mental peace, health, love, happiness, etc. Where one activity brings a particular kind of satisfaction, other activities can bring other kinds of it. If even a single activity brings dissatisfaction, we need to rethink to continue it.

5)     How well have we done with our abilities so far?
Everything we do has a reason behind it. We do them to achieve something. Patience and perseverance is the key to any desired output but the continuous evaluation is a must. Time never returns and hence we must set both short-term and long-term goals and measure our performance against them periodically. The goal again could be anything including happiness in what we do.

Another, factor that people usually link is luck. Luck can end any debate. It is easy to accept any conclusion if you link it with luck. It should, however, be linked only if there was no deficiency in our efforts. Once you have answers to the above question, the decision is easy. Perfection at a single or just a few things is as appropriate as it is for multiples.