Somehow I missed this thread and I haven't got time to post everything I wanted to say, but I did come across this quote recently which I quite liked. It was on Linkedin - mostly the crappy platitudes people post on Linkedin infuriate me, but for whatever reason this one struck a chord - "You don't have to be a high achiever, being a wide achiever is an equally valid choice". I liked it because doing a whole lot of different things is often seen as underachieving in this time of specialization. Yet in my work I often see how this increased focus on specialization presents a range of other risks (obviously there is a place for it in medicine, IT, science, law etc, but there are also benefits in having generalists in all those area, and in business I find people with a breadth of experience across industries or products often bring more to the table; they have a greater capacity for innovation, have a better understanding of the likely implications - positive and negative - of their decisions, are better people managers etc). It's one of the reasons humanities grads always pique my interest when I am recruiting. The idea that being a 'wide' achiever is not actually underachieving but simply a different kind of achieving really appealed to me, especially as someone who has always felt I wasn't doing 'enough' in any one area - "should I specialise in x so I am top of my field?? - but then I might not achieve what I want to in y!! But I want to be there for my daughter too. Any way I look at it I won't have done enough! Ahhh!"
Let's just say the quote has given me some peace of mind!
