If you want to master many things, you must first master one. Pick a personal or professional interest and start learning. Do it now and don't waste time choosing, for the choice will ultimately not matter.
Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't be enough
111–120 of 222 posts
Re: Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't be enough
#112My perspective is that I probably won't be an expert in a single field (though there's still time). I spent enough time with Java to be fairly proficient with it. Other than that, I call myself full stack developer and that means that I touched a lot of areas in IT. I'm good Linux user, I can administer Linux servers, I can tinker with OpenBSD, I know quite a lot of languages, I think that I touched every popular lan…
I'm like that too. I don't think I could actually become a 'real' expert at something that tiny. Way too boring.
I think of myself as an expert at software development. I have broad knowledge I can apply towards lots of 'problems'. I have a past of Linux and network administration which has always helped with bridging the gap of talking to and building for our actual admins and nowadays interfacing with SREs and knowing enough about k8s, I know how to read and diagnose error messages from tools and libraries and stacks I have never seen or built stuff in etc. I can write software in many a language you throw at me though I have ones I use regularly and actually know stuff about. I won't jump on building you a highly optimized trading platform using only Java primitive types as an 'expert' in that might because I'd find that very tedious and boring. Reading about it is very fun though!
Becoming an expert at just one thing in software to me sounds like being a carpenter and all you do every single day is to build walls. Nothing else (i.e. be a framer) or doing dry wall. Sure I'd probably get super fast and efficient at it. But it's gonna be boring as hell. I'd rather learn how to do many if not most of the jobs needed to build a wall, finish a basement, build a shed and roof it etc.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I scratch my itch by just doing the bits of everything I find interesting to some degree. Some I go into more deeply because they are interesting to me for a longer period of time. Others get boring fast and it's fine not to become an 'expert' in. Breadth first search for interesting stuff. If I did depth first I'd only get like 3 things into my lifetime and never know what I might have missed somewhere else.
Re: Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't be enough
#113To quote my favourite poet, Tomas Transtromer, from his poem "The Blue House"
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"Thank you for this life! Still, I miss the alternatives. The sketches, all of them, want to become real."
"Without really knowing it, we divine. Our life has a sister ship, following quite a different route".
Re: Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't be enough
#114If that idea of your lifetime not being enough is stressing you out, Dr David Burns' work on cognitive behavioural therapy might help. Saying you want to be an expert in many things because you are interested in many things could be papering over some deeper anxiety-driven motivations around 'not being good enough' or 'not being worthy of respect' or 'needing to prove yourself to someone' or 'not wanting to be a nobo…
What a great and thoughtful response. I really believe too many people — some very ambitious and successful — are being driven by unexamined pathology. I've seen too many examples of people who achieve their goals in terms of money or career or prestige or knowledge and remain miserable because they never took the time to ask themselves these questions.
Re: Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't be enough
#115I am an expert in procrastination and I intend to grow myself to become the absolute best procrastinator in the world! I am not just an expert, but will be a world leading expert.
I have 262,980 hours in actively practicing procrastination in my lifetime (30 solid years of procrastinating)
This is my life goal and I am doing very well in my progress at the moment.
Re: Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't be enough
#116I had this feeling during my 20s, but now in my 30s I just relax and live my life without such thought. I have kids that add value to my life and I work as SRE on k8s clusters. Just relax and do whatever you want to do, even if you just do it for a few days, weeks or months, you gain experience that can be useful for all sorts of things. No need to become an absolute super nerd in just one tiny topic.
Re: Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't be enough
#117If that idea of your lifetime not being enough is stressing you out, Dr David Burns' work on cognitive behavioural therapy might help. Saying you want to be an expert in many things because you are interested in many things could be papering over some deeper anxiety-driven motivations around 'not being good enough' or 'not being worthy of respect' or 'needing to prove yourself to someone' or 'not wanting to be a nobo…
I can appreciate that it might be like that for some, but absolutely not for me. Deeper mathematics is meaningful to me for its beauty and the way it feels like arriving at some fundamental truth, for whatever value that can exist. Similar for deeper physics, it's very appealing to me to try to understand the world on some fundamental level, as much as we're capable. And I find it very satisfying solving a good math…
I agree that it can be like this.
Acquiring expertise is like climbing a mountain. There are revelations in the process, and it is like reaching a beautiful vista and the joy of seeing things expansively, from a height.
I wish I could have this experience in other domains, and feel the constraint is just the physical and temporal bounds of life.
Still, I recognize it as a fantasy to want these things. It’s just simply not possible.
I also recognize that there is something to the Eastern ideas of awareness and consciousness and that you perhaps you don’t need to labor toward material expertise to experience life with expansive revelation?
Re: Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't be enough
#118I let my natural curiosity guide me. I used to beat myself up about not being one of those people who have a singular purpose, someone who focuses deeply in one area, but found solace in Susan Fowler's blog post: "All of the really great people of the past and of the present always have some singular destiny. Somehow they know exactly what they love, they find it when they're young, and they spend their entire lives…
Thank you for this, I remember hearing about this article but didn't bookmark it myself.
Re: Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't be enough
#119Get a paid job with experts who enjoy sharing their knowledge and thought processes. Work hard and gain expertise, then share it yourself. Transition from one domain to a related, or step up a higher level. That's the money part. Make sure to have a few, true hobbies with fun, dedicated, and serious folks. But most importantly, be an expert in living a fulfilling, wholesome life with people where love and friendship is the main theme.
Re: Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't be enough
#120After doing some camping I started to see life differently. You need to choose carefully what you will carry in your backpack. Yes, we enjoy to do and learn a lot of things, but we need to prioritize what is the most important for us.