Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Here’s Why You Should Definitely be a jack of all trades.
There’s no time to do shit you hate.
That’s why listening to your curiosity is so important. It’s a way to always keep the fire burning. If you’re in a hole, curiosity is your best shovel. Whatever you’re curious about is already at the forefront of your mind, you’re possibly just not willing to admit you want more of it. Do everything you’re interested in. It protects against the greatest risk in life: regret.
Don’t explore your ideas cause you think they’ll be awesome, do it cause it’ll help you not hate yourself for not doing it. That’s a better way to live. If you do everything you’ve ever wanted to do, some of those things will build into a part of your life, and that’s a perk. It’s not the point, it’s the perk. The point is the journey of it all, the perks are what actually sticks.
Maybe you make some money or get good at something or complete a task you feel proud of. Maybe you meet someone along the way or go somewhere new or experience an unfamiliar instance. Those are all perks.
Again, the point is to do, not to get.
Never think too long, you’ll miss out.
One time I wanted to do a podcast.
Ever listened to it? Of course not. Cause after eight episodes I realized it wasn’t something I wanted to continue doing. It was a hassle to find guests, annoying to set up the tech, a bitch to promote… but I did it. I learned how to do use adobe Audition, some cool mics, and I met maybe the greatest person of all time: Emilio Scotto. He was my first guest. It was a podcast about travel, where I interviewed travelers who had traveled harder than me. The podcast I left in the dust, where most things I try are still swimming, but Emilio is still with me today (proof as I tell you about him now: the greatest traveler of all time).
But what woulda happened if I retraced Joe Rogan’s footsteps? I woulda never picked up the mic. Don’t think about it, be about it, as my old boxing coach would say.
If you hate it, stop it.
I used to read books in their entirety, even if it wasn’t my favorite book. Till one day not too long ago I asked myself why I would waste precious time reading a book I didn’t absolutely love. Why would I read a book unless I’m obsessed with it? There are millions of books to read. Now I give a book twenty pages to win me over. If it doesn’t get me by page twenty, I’m out.
Same with hobbies…
Get into them ASAP and get out if you don’t love them. I got into astronomy about a year ago. I bought a telescope right away. My friend Jamie taught me how to use it. Now I show people the moon when we throw parties at my house and spread the hobby.
On another note, I wanted to learn physics. So I watched half a Youtube course on physics. Turns out in order to know physics I had to know some calculus and to know calculus I had to know trigonometry, and in order to know trig, I had to know geometry or something like that, and by the end of the month, I had spent like 50 hours at work watching math videos. I quenched my mind’s thirst, then I stopped. Not all hobbies should be continued. Try on the pants to see if they fit. If they do, keep em. If not, trade em in. And just cause you have pants you like doesn’t mean you needa wear them all the time. Some hobbies stay in the closet most of the year and come out only on special occasions.
Nothing is out of reach
If you’ve thought about it, it’s within reach. Nothing is untryable. I used to wanna be a famous actor when I was twenty. I had to know if I could become a movie star, so I went full throttle. I got headshots, photoshopped that shit, got thousands of them printed, typed up millions of resumes (made-up credentials of course), bought a bazillion blue envelopes and printed cover letters on animal-print paper to be different, then sent my headshot and resume to every agent in NYC once every couple weeks. By the end of four months, I had four agencies sending me out on auditions. Turns out I’m no Meryl Streep, but that’s not even what turned me off. It was the auditions. Auditioning every day was terrible. But I still got in the room with some of the biggest casting directors and producers in the world. And it all started with an idea that maybe I could be famous.
My point is regret is the enemy of life.
There’s no time to second guess yourself when your mind tells you it wants something. If it wants something, write it down and plan it out. Cause if you don’t, that desire fades away and you miss a valuable opportunity to be curious. It’s amazing how numbers work. Send out enough emails and your life will change overnight.
When I was building a life in Los Angeles, I emailed every single job. Every single gig. Every single everyone. I hit up the entire city. No end in mind other than not where I was. I applied to some public relations job in Beverly Hills when I was newly sober; a momentary impulse to fire off a resume and a ridiculous cover letter to the owner of the company. For a split second, it sounded interesting. I got hired and learned how to be a publicist. I then traveled the world doing PR from my computer for DJs. Who could predict that?
At that same time, I saw an ad for a reality TV tattoo show. I emailed the producer my Twitter bio and got a phone call from 495 Productions, the company that did Jersey Shore. I ended up on some Kat Von Dee TV show and got a free tattoo out of it. Crazy shit happens when you don’t give a fuck about the outcome.
I’m a big believer in doing shit quickly.
Never do it right. Just do it fast. Fast beats amazing every day of the week. If you are waiting for the right time to do the right thing you will die waiting. Be a jack of any trade you find interesting, cause eventually you’ll end up good at a few of them, and being good at a few things is better than being great at one.
A jack of all trades is a master of none, but better than a master of one.