Personally I feel like I am FAILING to as of right now. However in a lot of ways I'm doing a lot better at juggling than most people. Whether or not that is because I have planned it out well, or because I have talked about this subject extensively I'm not sure.

Let's start by explaining the premise:

We only Live ONE LIFE, even if you believe in reincarnation, this version of you comes only once. We have a limited amount of time on this blue ball of a planet, and we would want to experience as much of it as we possibly can.

We are forced into this narrative that you should only do ONE thing, and that the specialist mindset is the way to go. Although when you look at history, it couldn't be further from the truth.

We've ALWAYS had Generalists in our populace for the entire history of humanity, and even in the last hundred years. When specialism thrived, the entrepreneurs and jugglers of many hats are often the MOST successful.

SO how do we do it?

Through the PIOS I call it "Phases"

The reason I call them phases rather than "areas of interest", "areas of knowledge", or even just "niches". Is that a Phase can include your job, career, hobby, fun talent, or even just something in the FUTURE that you WANT to do when you get to it.

They are 'phasical', which doesn't seem to be a word so I'm making it here. Meaning that they can be cyclical, simultaneous, or even interleaving.

Some of my phases come and go, just like how our interests wane. However they come back too.

I also like the word phases because it sounds more palatable when you have multiple phases going on at once. Something about the psychology of it, versus saying you are pursuing multiple areas of knowledge at once.

The Juggling VS Serialized approach

I've written about this a number of times, but I still feel that I haven't gotten to the bottom of it. Basically should you take a jack of all trades approach, and do everything at once (or many things at once more accurately). OR.... should you do something of a multi-specialist kind of route, where you do one thing after the other? (Note the grammar in the writing of this post is a bit off, but I'm doing it intentionally for the effect of the communication).

While I personally don't think either method is actually BETTER than the other, it does seem to me that the serialized approach works more often for a bigger amount of people. However there are a few people out there, particularly those who have that polymathy ingrained from birth, or in a lot of cases if they're neurodivergent as well.

There seems to be a pattern for those people to stick to juggling. As if you stick to it long enough, those multiple areas you are juggling will eventually become expertise. It just takes a bit longer, although you may be more satisfied during the process for sticking to your gut.

Personally I see it as a both approach, a win win type of deal, and that means you need to be thinking on a yearly and 'decadely' basis. As you can plan out your phases ahead of time, and plan for doing "X" this year. Then "X", "X", "X", the next year for example.

In 2023 I did this with the intention of focusing on 3 things in the year. Had I done the "12 Week Year", and focused more on my Quarterly layers then I think I would have done better. Although I also couldn't anticipate the things that would happen that year (like me getting deathly ill). Although the point is I think the planning worked.

How am I "Failing"?

As I put it earlier.

Really I don't think I particularly am, it is just with content creation you get a bit more feedback. Meaning with a lot of endeavors you would work and work, but you don't always get feedback on whether or not you are progressing. Until you get to a certain point or level, and that tells you "Oh okay I am good at this" or something like that. This is actually what leads to imposter syndrome, as you are typically in that liminal space between progression markers.

With content creation I can see a more measured output, and a response in the analytics. Maybe I'm over thinking it, which is certainly within reason. However I think that because I've linked my polymathic areas of interest almost directly to my content ecosystem. I personally feel that if one arm is not producing enough content, say like the polymathy newsletter, or my gaming channel, etc.

Then I am "failing" that arm/area of interest. Even if in reality I'm not.

This lesson I felt was that of me over-analyzing my situation might be helpful to you. Maybe you're in the same spot, overthinking, and over measuring. When what we should be doing is just taking the next step towards our goals.