Don't be an expert, be the only

For a lot of my life, I always aimed at getting better at the things I did. Whether it be maths, programming, etc. When I found other people better than me, I then had confidence issues because it felt like no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t be better than them.

Sports is a big example for this. For most of my life, I was “fat” and felt like I wasn’t good at sports at all. My brother, who arguable spent lesser time learning something was way better at it than I was. It was depressing.

I started finding for things that I was good at that people around me couldn’t or didn’t want to “compete” in. Instead of normal engineering, I took up programming. I learned pen spinning, I want to learn photography, UI / UX, etc. Things that people around me didn’t care to learn.

For awhile, I thought I was running away that I just didn’t want to face the fact that I wasn’t better than these people but it turns out that I have this ability to connect things that are irrelevant. I can take a metaphor that I learnt from pen spinning and apply it to work. Or a way of communicating from UI/UX to the way I make presentations for meetings.

People tell me that I am spread to thinly sometimes but I find real joy in connecting these things and it seems to work well in life and with the advice out there of niching down. It’s only hard because people do call you weird and it does get lonely but standing up for that is a good thing.

I still find it hard to do so though. I don’t find myself the best at a single thing but when it comes to pulling things together, that I think is my strong suite.