Being Great at 2 things …..

A lot of the people I admire I’ve realized are multi talented. It sounds simple, but hear me out. It’s not just that they’re really really good at their chosen profession, they are also almost equally proficient in something totally unconnected, be it sports, music, arts.

My favourite professor still plays rock music on stage (albeit less frequently), a senior management consultant I was conversing with today told me he cannot imagine his life now without practicing his veena daily. A cousin who is senior leader in his organization still competes in most sports regularly.

The tendency is to dismiss this as a hobby, but I’ve now come to believe that this is an expression of an intrinsic part of their nature and not a mere distraction. That is why they’re so good at it even without any obvious incentives (as in the case of work). This expression when sacrificed in the false belief that one can only be really good at 1 thing leads to us stifling a part of ourselves. We end up going through life as a 1 dimensional person with a nagging feeling that we’d rather be doing something else.

It’s time we set aside this narrow minded focus and work on improving our talent stack (term borrowed from Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator who worked in a cubicle and doodled as a “hobby”).

Who knows which stage(s) we will be performing later in life?