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Jack of all trades, master of none?

12086 Views 28 Replies 23 Participants Last post by  Luciano
Do you identify with that phrase and why?

I do. I sometimes feel like I'm spread thinly over all my interests, but that I'm not as proficient in any of them as I think I should be. Is it an INTJ thing or just a Turquoise thing?

I know there is a thread where INTJ's discussed their obsessions and many mentioned being focussed on something for months and then switching to something else. This seems to be a type characteristic so I thought it would be interesting to know your experiences regarding my question.
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In my realm, I consider myself the "I.T. Jack Of All Trades, Master of None". It's what I do for a living. And to be perfectly honest, it frustrates me. I WANT to be a SME (Subject Matter Expert) of some system I'm working on instead of being spread across so much, but my current job doesn't allow it. I'm in the process of getting my bachelors in hopes it will help me get better standing at position openings at surrounding employers - bigger companies with room to grow & move up in. I want to get into a System Analyst role, and I know I'd be good at it - I've done plenty of it on a small scale in current/previous jobs...

All work aside, I tend to get frustrated on any subject I try to master. As soon as I get a bug up my ass to learn everything there is to know about something, I hear my mother in my head saying, "No matter how much you know about something, there will always be someone who knows more" and "For each expert there is always an equal and opposite expert"... and all the wind is knocked out of my sails and I drop into a mindless lull of irritation and frustrated agony.
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That's nonsense. The average PhD, for instance, is the expert in the tiny part of the field he worked on.I also think the amount of people who know more about my current field (if I define this properly narrow, i.e. one particular trading strategy) than I do would fit comfortably in a rather small living room. It's all a matter of extreme specialization; the penalty is you only are so knowledgeable for very very small bits of your field.
And with that penalty, do you not feel that much more isolated? That once you've mastered something, you no longer can engage in meaningful, learning conversation with another to understand it more/better? Once you've got it perfected, don't you corner yourself into being bored with the conversation around it?? Or is that when you then move to a new, different topic to explore and master?
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