Jack of all Trades - Master of None!!

Yea....that describes me also unfortunately.

You've probably heard it a thousand times before but I will happily be your 1,001.

Just stick to ONE thing and become great at it and you will succeed much faster. Sure, you need to play around with a few things in order to find those that you are good at and enjoy. But once you find something that works then concentrate on becoming great at that one thing.

Look at all the people out there making the big money in the world. Sports people, actors, businessmen, etc. They have all been successful because they became GREAT at just one thing.

Do that and you won't need to worry about all the other stuff. It's not something others can teach you. You need to make a change in the way you approach things and find that one thing you want to focus on.

working on this exact issue in my life right now. I will follow this post and see what help comes our way. Thank you

No reason you can't be great at a lot of things. Look at Tim Ferriss :-)

The issue is engineering distractions out of your concentrated work hours, whatever it is that you may be working on.

This probably also describes me to an extent.

We live in a world where many people are overspecialised, and not always to positive effect. They're decent at one thing or a narrow set of things - often by necessity (i.e. their job/career demands it) - and everything else they're quite mediocre at, or clueless about. Well, to be quite fair, they don't get much time to hone/develop many new skills when they're working ~8 hours/day, ~5 days/week, carrying out a pretty narrowly allocated set of tasks, with weekends more for "relaxation" than broadening horizons and expanding one's skillset.

In that sense, to be a "natural" Jack of all trades isn't necessarily a bad thing. Some of the most well-rounded, intelligent and handy people I've ever met don't "consider themselves anything in particular", and yet they're still a notch above most people at most stuff, and you can bet your backside they have a solution to almost any problem. And you're never short of topics on which to have a conversation.

And guess which category some of the most boring people I've ever met fit into? "Overspecialised". Useful and interested in a narrow set of situations, but otherwise ... pleh, whatever.

It has its benefits, is what I'm saying.

The "issue", as I see it, isn't so much one of any "physical limitations", nor one of limited intellectual/learning capacity, but - usually - one of impatience.

I'm very impatient. I like to make significant progress at whatever I'm doing ... or to at least feel like I am. I don't want to spend 5 years of my life chipping away at the same little piece of work when I can go away and do something new, fresh, entirely different and infinitely more exciting.

Why? Because, for the most part, I'm practically inclined, and I'm selfish. Maybe if I just spent the next 10 years doing this or that, I'd make a breakthrough or set a precedent that'd improve the lives of all people world over. Too bad I don't care.

My plans aren't made in accordance with some inner desire to go down in history as "the man famous for <whatever>". I don't give a crap about fame, I just want the job doing well. I want to enjoy my life. Success and good fortune perhaps matter to me, but not fame. So screw it.

The drawback of this is that you simply won't spend enough time honing a specific skill, or filling in the gaps in your knowledge in <whatever> subject, to ever be considered widely as a master in that particular field. It's unlikely, anyway.

But if you're just in "for the money", or for everyday self-fulfillment, or "for passing the time", chances are good that being a master isn't necessary.

If you're unhappy with that, and want to narrow your skillset but reach a higher level in whatever you do, then you're just going to have to work on increasing your patience and focus and dedication. But you'd better love what it is you're doing, otherwise you don't have a hope in hell. And remember that there's likely a reason you haven't done this up until now: because you're easily bored and your "heart aint in it".

So good luck with that!

I also feel like that sometimes. No need to worry about that. All the comments so far proves that you are not alone

Find your strengths and develop it. Always ready to leverage the skills of others. All successful people are accomplishing goals through others.

What you haven't said is why you think being a 'jack of all trades and master of none' is holding you back. Nor have you said that anything is presenting you with bona fide reasons you can't focus on one one thing.

For some people, it's a low boredom threshhold. For others, it's the thrill of the "aha" moment when a new skill kicks in; that thrill is more powerful than the satisfaction from true mastery. For yet others, it's something else.

Go beyond looking for others who share a block and look inside at WHY you have a block or why you feel it's a block. Then look for ways to get beyond the block or remove it.

Welcome to the club... I also consider myself one of those.

I have held so many different jobs along the years, that I can hardly keep count. And now online , I find myself doing exactly the same thing.

Let me take the more optimistic perspective.

There's nothing wrong w/ your situation. You don't need to be a master in any field to make money in it. You just need to have a solid understanding of it, which it seems you have... and across a wide array of different topics. This only implies you have a large playing field that you can chalk and decide where to focus your efforts on.

To become a master in anything takes significant investment of time and energy. In fact, studies say it takes 10,000 hours before you can master a skill. It takes far fewer hours to create a profitable website.

Try not to branch out so much and learn to focus on that particular task at hand. What I do is takes breaks once too much info comes my way and I feel like lingering on to something else.

Thanks for all the replies - has definitely made me feel more positive in myself and the situation. I didn't expect so many people to also feel the same way I do which has made me feel a bit more confident.

I think there are 2 things that are giving me the blocks:

1) I'm afraid of success - it may sound ridiculous but for my whole life I have been "ok" - there are times when I've been on the breadline picking up crumbs (such as now) but I know something will come along and make my life better again but all I have known is to have just enough to get by. My whole family is like that and I guess that is what I'm used to.

2) Afraid of failure. I know that I have a few Jack of all Trade skills that are better than others but I stop myself before getting too involved for fear of failing. I know this is a personal battle I have to deal with and to try and fail is better than never trying at all but it's hard.

Thanks again for all the responses, sorry for getting too deep in this section of the forum. I definitely think spending time in here and with experienced members will be a good thing.

I think to a certain extent you need to be to keep costs down, I know I am.. but slowly creeping and focusing on a few things now

I would now considered myself a jack of all trades (graphic/web design pro, product creation master, high converting copy writer ninja, Media buy expert and now SEO GURU extraordinaire) But I mastered one thing at a time and moved on to the next once I found a method to turn that skill into a profit.

There is always something to move onto once you have mastered one thing. I am now working on automation and outsourcing with crazy success!

This is precisely the reason why I couldn't hack working for others after having experienced the freedom and responsibility of having my own business from a young age, calling the shots and doing it all "my way".

I recall having a great idea, back in 2003 or so, to integrate an online ordering system with the internal ordering/accounts system within the company I was working for (briefly). Given the rapid uptake of internet connections by businesses, and the HUGE bombardment of "problem orders" that we received on a daily basis (ones that exceeded manufacturing limitations and what not), and the huge amount of time and money we spent dealing with them, I saw a huge number of benefits to this:

(1) Absolutely no more such orders (the system knew exactly what order combinations were acceptable and what weren't, etc).

(2) No more "faxing back and forth" to rectify such problems. Save money on telephone bill, toner costs, paper costs, general fax machine running/maintenance costs (they were literally running all day, every day ... lots of breakdowns and technician call-outs, etc), etc.

(3) No need for the 5-6 full-time order processing peeps (I was one of them) to spend all day inputting these orders into the system and liaising with through said fax machines whenever a problem arose, allowing us to perhaps be reassigned to customer service - which was wholly understaffed - so that the customers could be kept better informed and we weren't receiving a stack of complaints and losing handfuls of customers each day from all over the country.

(4) Perhaps relinquish responsibility for incorrect orders, which often occurred as a result of disputes over what the customer had actually written (crappy handwriting, bad fax transmission, etc). Any problems and it couldn't really have been anyone but the customer's own error.

(5) Bla bla, etc, etc.

I didn't intend to make the darn thing myself, but I could've quite easily put together a team of people who could, and managed them myself, having by that time come to understand the ins and outs of the system and their ordering and manufacturing processes.

No-one gave a crap. I was just a stupid young kid. And more to the point, it wasn't my job. Who the hell am I to make such a suggestion? If the management/board were interested in that sort of fantasy mumbojumbo, they'd arrange it themselves. (Except they wouldn't, because they had no idea such a thing even existed - they were old fashioned to the core, and totally out of the loop). "And what about the IT guy?". What about him? The dude's a clueless moron who routinely lies about the cause of problems, figuring no-one will be any the wiser, just so he can stall and put off having to get off his arse for an extra few minutes.

Just one of the examples of when the peeps "running the show" don't know crap about anything, and miss out on huge cost savings because they're too set in their routines and only concerned about the limited range of tasks they've been assigned or assumed for themselves.

6 years later, I heared they were finally implementing that system I mentioned.

*grits teeth*

Never again.