It’s been a blast knowing you for the short time that I’ve known you. You’re even more of a generalist than I am – I speak admiringly.

As generalists, we’ll always have to expend energy distinguishing between signal vs. noise.

One thing I’ve found helpful is to focus on shipping and creating – it reduces your time of exposure to signal and noise. It sounds like a loss but I think it’s a good thing.

It’s not very authentic for everyone to have something valuable to say all the time, is it? Most conversations with friends and acquaintances contain filler in between the good bits. And sometimes, if we’re lucky, it’s the filler that ignites the good bits.

The question then is who’s filler is worth enduring or is most likely to lead to the good bits?

1. Actively and attentively follow people I want to collaborate with.

2. Passively, in my free time, follow people who have interesting things to offer, until I’ve really absorbed and understood their most valuable ideas (the ones they keep harping on).

This way, I use my time and energy for it’s most effective purpose, while allowing me to learn somewhat random new things whenever I have the time to do so. And while some people I can pick up on their most valuable idea pretty quickly and can put someone new in their spot in my list, other people stay on for a very, very long time because their ideas are so complex and/or changing.

Many thanks for the mention (and good luck with eliminating the busyness).

Best wishes from Wales

Michael

Long, good question – I don’t think it necessarily conflicts with being a generalist. But it’s true that part of my value is fitting pieces together even when those pieces don’t seem relevant initially. Part of my strength is in constructing a structure in which pieces of information can be integrated, such that “random” facts actually fit together.