Why you Should Diversify your Skills Portfolio
And the Basis to become a Well-Rounded Man
If you have been on this corner of the internet for a long time, you might have read or heard this quote:
Jack of all trades, master of none.
This quote, used by writer and self-development guru, is generally used to explain why having a broad set of skills might be detrimental to your life. It also says in a few words why it would be better to own one skill that everybody can depend on.
Not to say that owning one particular skill is useless, but that in the modern world, being an expert at one thing, does not necessarily make you stand out of the crowd. Becoming above average (top 50%) is relatively easy in any set of skills but becoming the expert, being part of the top 5% or less, is a long and arduous process that might not give you the return on investment you desired.
The reality is that the famous quote is incomplete and misquoted.
Jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.
This version of this quote is much more nuanced than the other one. The other one implies that being diversified with competencies is a loser’s game. This one implies that mastering one thing can a good idea, but that having a wide range of skills you can rely on can be more often than not better for you. It is not black and white matters, but in the end, the difference between the 2 quotes is a mindset issue.
Is Life is Scarce or Plentiful
Ultimately, it comes down at 2 mindsets. The scarcity mindset and the abundance mindset.
It is typical for people who believe they can only get one job, one skill, one girlfriend, one interest, one way of life, one calling in life, and so one, to hold a scarcity mindset.
It makes it even more difficult when you have invested a huge chunk of your life into one thing, and see it disappears before your eyes. When your job is your life or the woman you are with is your life and they are gone, you have no more life. It becomes difficult, sometimes unbearable, to move on to a new way of life because all your realm of possibilities was shattered.
I spend my childhood and adolescence doing gymnastics. The week was spent training, around 20 to 24 hours, and the weekend I was all about coaching it. My whole life until I was 18 was school, gymnastics, and the little free time I had was spent on video games. Although I did good enough at a national level, the investment made me miss out on opportunities outside of that sphere. When I decide to leave, I focus on school, but ultimately I kept doing the only thing I knew other than gymnastics. Video game. I kept wasting that time until I was desperate, depressed, and unhappy enough to take a step forward and take control of my life.
All of this comes down to the financial principle of investment:
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
As much as it is important to diversify your portfolio of assets with your money, you also need to diversify in all aspects of your life. Even more important, you need to diversify in domains that are not related to each other.
In finance, if you diversify your portfolio across only one type of industry, is it really diversified? What if the market for that specific industry crash?
For example, at the moment in the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin dictated it. If it goes up, the rest goes up. If goes down, the rest goes down. Whether or not you have to diversify your money across 5 other cryptocurrencies, you are still dependent on Bitcoin fluctuation.
In other to diversify your life, you need to invest in multiple unrelated and independent domains where one is not going to influences the other.
When you diversify your skills and your interests, you live in an abundance mindset.
The Limits of Diversification
Like anything else in life, diversification has its limit. A few things you should be aware of in order to avoid wasting your time spreading your interest too thin.
Avoid too much diversification too fast.
For anyone who found himself in the rabbit hole of personal development, you’ll be driving on motivation mode. Any new concepts, behaviors, or habits you stumble upon will most likely make you motivated to try, experiment, and implement it in your life. It is not a problem if you are focused on doing one thing at the time. It is a problem if you are implementing 14 new habits and 5 new skills within a week.
I have been there. It is exciting to feel in control of your action and your improvement, but it is impossible to manage in the long term. You’ll only find yourself stuck and unmotivated at some point and you’ll feel stressed out for not being able to implement all these wonderful life-changing habits.
Focus your life around 1 to 3 skills every year. Go in-depth enough to have above-average competency and understanding. The next year, move on to something else (or keep doing it if you enjoy a lot). The importance is to create a solid base for that skill so that you come back to it relatively easily.
For me, this year, it is about learning Salsa dancing, learning to build a business, and learn about investing and cryptocurrency. I do other activities and other reading as well, but my main focus is these 3 skills.
Too much diversification has a low ROI
As your life goes by, the return on investment on each new skill you learn is going to go down gradually.
It is important to develop a solid base of physical, practical, and abstract skills but when you are 60, 70, or 80 years old, it becomes less and less important to learn new things. Not that you should ignore it, but that the time you have left goes down by the minutes and that focusing on the things you already know you enjoy is more important than the new things you could learn.
When young, learn pretty much anything, it will make you a well-rounded human being, but as you grow old, switch to doing the thing you enjoy rather than focusing on what your skills could provide to society.
Developing a Solid Base
In order to move to higher and more difficult skills, you need to build a base of skills almost like a pyramid where the bottom is your foundational and essential skills and where the top is the more difficult and aspirational skills to obtain.
Just as a quick example, not having any social skills (small talk, relating to others, etc.), moving up in life is going to be much more difficult. The second you want to build a business or offer a service, you are going to be required to talk to other people. I don’t care how shy you are, you eventually going to have to learn it.
Diversifying your interest and skill portfolio is a long term investment. If you expect quick results, you are doing it wrong. You won’t do it a year… you might not even do it in the next 5 years, but at some point, skills are going to feed off each other, compound, and build yourself faster and faster.
Where should Start?
First, I would say to focus on skills and interests that fit your personal goals and system. Focus on skills that will give the best return on investment for what you imagine your life to be. Ultimately, this is personal and requires work on your part to find out what could be useful to your life.
Here a non-exhaustive list of things, I think every man should have as base skills, which are far from having myself.
Basic Physical Skill and Knowledge:
- Cooking basic healthy meals (and meal preparation).
- Track your calories, fasting, and basic knowledge about weight loss.
- Building muscle (and the most useful and efficient lifting movement)
- Fighting skills (Strikes with hand and leg, throws and submissions)
- Manual work (Anything that requires to build or repairs, basic car maintenance, making your own furniture, etc.)
This one is can become a rabbit hole because there are so many things you learn but…
- Survival skills (Making a fire with almost nothing, How to get water, How to get food in the wild, The basic survival equipment, etc.)
Basic Social skills and Knowledge
- Understanding body language (Both Men and Women)
- Small-talk conversation skills
- Basic presentation skills (Having something to say about yourself)
- Learning humor and storytelling
- Learning how to game and flirting with women
- Learning how to banter
I’m curious to hear what you thought are. Do you agree with my list? If not, what would be a list of basic skills you think everyone should have?
