Jack of All Trades or Master of One?
“Jack of All Trades Masters None”
The basic question that an adult asks you(or perhaps what a brown adult would ask you) is most likely going to be-
“So, What do you Want to Become?” , or, “What are You Doing Now? How’s the Studies Going and all?”
Don’t know about others, but this is the basic conversation starter I have come across. And I know how to answer this when I was a kid, I had some different answers. It went mainly like- “I want to be an Astronaut, a Scientist and a Dentist”.
Pretty weird right? And the moment I said this, came a small laugh with a statement- “You cannot become everything-you have to choose one thing”; and when I asked why not, I was hit by MY MOST HATED IDIOM!
Perhaps, this is a proverb that your parents(or some relatives) might have told you when you were TRYING TO DO IT ALL (and were focusing completely on nothing). Well, this is an Idiom I do not believe in-nor do I believe in anyone telling this. Here’s the reason-
THE OPPOSITE POLES!
I have been raised by my parents; my mom and dad-the opposite poles. When it comes to teaching me something, I always get COMPLETE Advice, because I get experiences from both sides of that situation/thing. If my Dad has had experience “A”, then, there are high chances that mom had the Experience “A`”(the complement of that experience). Thus, I always get a good amount of IN-DEPTH pre-experience before even having to experience it in reality.
Coming to raising me, my parents had two very different thoughts-while My Dad believed that I should pick one thing, hone it, and go ahead in improving it and become the top in it; my mom came from the other side of the spectra; encouraging me to always learn multiple new things, and learning the basics of everything and all that was and is out there.
I used to sometimes be dead focused on one thing, keeping all the things apart; while sometimes I was trying to get as much as possible and learn and know all.
While Mom encouraged me to take part in all the competitions in school(telling me that taking part in them would become an added responsibility post which, I would try harder to learn that skill), Dad was more of a person who was like- Jump in those Competitions where you know you are already better than the 90% of participants and then, work harder to come 1st in it(and yes, I am a strong believer you should enter all the competition to just Annihilate others and emerge as the best-always aim towards this thing)
THE ADVANTAGE I GOT
Being in a competitive school from childhood was something that had pushed me to level myself up; as a matter of fact, our batch had some really multi-talented people, who were skilled in more than one field and that is the reason, the competition and the heat were all-time high. Be it in Academics, Sports, Music, Dance or whatever, the competition was cut-throat and this honed me.
Mom’s advice to jump into everything exposed me to multiple fields and gave me a base level of knowledge in it. This helped me filter and categorize them, the things I was excellent in, to the ones where I was awful and I hated. This categorization was then applied with Dad’s advice-excelling at the things I loved, I would then allocate 90% of my focus on those things where I was keener and felt that I had them as my Domain.
FACING THE REALITY
I thank God that I was lucky to get both the sides-but many times, people impose just one sort of thinking on their children; that is, STICK TO ONE THING, FOCUS HARD ON IT, and IF NOT SUCCEEDING, TRY HARDER AND BE PERSISTENT.
While being persistent and improving yourself in a field is good, it isn’t SOMETHING THAT YOU SHOULD DEVOTE EVERYTHING TO. I genuinely and deeply believe in:-
“Become the Jack of All Trades WITH Master of One!”
I say this because, to be good in a field, you need to be 100% in it-but to be Good at Life, you need to be Good in everything. You need to be an individual who knows how to drive, how to run, can lift weights, can box, knows some Mathematics, knows the world, can dance, sing, have fun, and even be serious and focused.
Being an All-rounder is a RATHER HARD thing-something that pays off nowadays the masses are going for SPECIALIZATIONS, be good at one thing and that’s all you would need to succeed, but that is not true. Even when speaking of degree-you specialize in some field AFTER you have done BASICS of all the things; then why not do the same in real life?
I believe that you should be better than 75% of the crowd in all things and choose one or two such fields where you are in the top 90% and you are good to go.
The reason being- in all the things, since you are better than 75% of the people, the people who are not ahead of you would mostly be the ones who want to become 100% in that field; thus, makes you better than the mediocre masses.
And when coming to your selected field-those are your trump the ones you know are your Domain and you can annihilate anyone in them. This is something many people abstained from saying- “IF YOU GO ON CHASING EVERYTHING, YOU WILL LOSE IT ALL! SO BETTER STICK TO ONE THING AND JUST MAKE IMPROVEMENTS IN IT.”
You should be chasing all the things that are possible, upskilling yourself in all the fields above the base 75%; while honing yourself in your 1 or 2 Trumps.
Ergo, next time you come across someone you truly love, care about, and want him/her to be the best version of themselves don’t tell them-“Jack of All Trades Master’s None”-but rather urge them to become
“Jack of All Trades with Master of One!”
So yes, with this, the Blog has come to an end, will catch you all back with the Next Blog-till then, Keep Learning, and Keep Growing😄
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#The Blog was Originally Published by me on 10th June 2024 on My Website
