During one of the many deep thinking train trips I make 8 times a week, I realised something about myself and noted a rather large flaw I’ve been honing in on for a long while now. If it wasn’t already apparent – something I’ve noticed with my writing already – a lot of my thoughts are pretty narcissistic. On a side note I’m noticing a strong self of Self in most of my actions. I have no issue with this in particular (at least not right now…).

The saying goes ‘jack of all trades’; good at everything, master of nothing, and it wasn’t until today’s train ride did I notice that I had embraced this far too much. I have always been quick to learn a new skill or piece of information, but rarely would I delve deeper than knowing what rather than knowing how. The flaw that became apparent was contentedness. A lesson my VCE Literature teacher imparted with the class was to never be content, and Steve Jobs himself once advised young ambitious minds to always be greedy.

I had accepted the ‘jack of all trades role’ and hence I became lazy. Even last semester I was unconsciously content with just knowing the top level of information required to complete each assessment task and activity. This is something I want to change immediately, though I don’t think it’s an instantaneously possible goal. 

Knowing this now, I want to focus on doing one simple thing. I will deny myself the luxury of only learning the minimum amount of information to ‘pass’ or to get along. While I have the innate ability to learn quickly and more thoroughly than most, this is not to my liking. When the situation demands it, I will go beyond the basic level of understanding by committing more time to the task. The aim for this will be to expand on both the technical skills required of the task – whatever they may be – as well as the context of the task; why am I doing this? Is there a history to this? Are there any recent discoveries about it? Do I know any people or resources that might be able to teach me about the task better?

Publishing this post via mobile, seeing if the app is worth having.