Master generalists
Every day I switch between 2–3 — sometimes 4 — of my projects. A typical day might be:
- Answer support emails for Carrd plugins
- Build a quick plugin if someone asks a question that needs a unique answer
- Write daily for Lifelog
- Post on LinkedIn for Outsprint
- Build in public on Twitter for Lifelog or Plugins
- Prepare slide deck or content for consulting with Outsprint client
For people who like to focus on one thing, this is a nightmare. For doctors, they'll suggest I go on medication probably. If I'm employed, my boss might frown upon my way of working.
But I love it.
To me doing one thing for the whole day it's no different from doing multiple things. I can just do one thing for the whole day if work requires. My consulting projects are often like that. To be honest, I have no deep personal preference. But context switching is fun for me. Switching helps bring fresh energy. So when my schedule is free, I tend to find myself doing multi-tasking more.
Society in general seem to hate this though. It's like how the world favours extroverts. You only read articles titled "Introvert? Here's how to be more social and outspoken." I'd love to one day see an article that says "Extrovert? Here's now to be more reflective and quiet."
Same energy when it comes to multi-tasking, context switching, and generalists. Society explicitly favours specialists and focus.
I like to say, people like me are actually specialists too. Specialists at context switching and multi-tasking. Or master generalists.
I think the neurological diversity has a purpose and benefit for us as a species. But in our factory stamp approach to work and productivity, we've forgotten that diversity is more resilient.
Thankfully, being an indie hacker means I don't have to heed any of that, and just do whatever works for me.
In a way, I didn't find indie hacking. Maybe indie hacking found me instead... because of those divergent traits.
I'm similar, love to jump between projects and work on diverse things. I don't think society is against it, though. The chatter I see is more about "deep work" and not solely focusing one 1 thing.
I do deep work sessions on hard problems. It's easy to multitask when you're working on improving a design, building a new page, writing a blog post. But when you're building a new algorithm, coming up with a new way to distribute or analyse data, that's where you need to focus on 1 thing to see it clearly and make that 1 thing happen.
Having said that, these sessions are like 3-4 hours each. Then I need to switch contexts and refresh my brain. 😊
Yeah I enjoy deep work sessions too. But not everyday, gets too intense and boring for me. It's like there's a limit, and can only be topped back up by doing something else!
You should check out Generalist.World and @millyt91's work.
Haha I'm also like you. I often build multiple projects at the same time, and whenever I'm stuck with one I switch to another 😂
Master generalist is a cool term. I totally get that feeling of having no preference.
The UX Designer role is the very embodiment of this, and smaller companies have benefited greatly from solo UX designers or 'lone wolves' exactly because of people like you and those you're describing. At the same time (and this speaks to your post a little) UX Design has suffered a little in the last few years because people who've taken the role on are predisposed to focus on one thing (usually UI) and therefore neglect all the other elements of UX.
Being able to pivot and focus on different tasks throughout the day, or even per project, is a very useful skill and should be celebrated.
I too am a generalist! Do a little of everything. My problem is I'm not super strong in any one area. For my projects, that's ok, but looking for online work is a challenge as I can't point to a solid body of work.
Agreed !
You're not alone!
I get so bored working on the same thing that I've pretty much designed my freelancing to never have to worry about this. I sometimes romanticize about focusing on one thing and not having to context switch, but in the end I think I'd just end up doing it with various different departments under that same umbrella.
I agree though, once you get used to context switching its far less disruptive and provides that needed variety.