That feeling has never completely left me—I still have varied interests and share your fear that I’m not digging into any single topic deep enough. The thing I’ve learned is that even if you pick something that feels narrow at the time (economics, for me) there are infinitely many interesting subtopics within that field to keep you interested, excited, and learning. Maybe that helps take some fear out of difficult-to-reverse decisions—like fields of study—if you’re worried you may get bored with it. This may not be true for all fields, but there are plenty where it is the case if that’s a concern of yours.
Figuring out the most useful skills to build is beyond my expertise, but you should certainly retain the belief that eventually you can and will build skills to create value! (And of course, check out 80000 hours if you haven’t).
Could you tell me more about the ‘switching subtopics’ part? Do you notice that the subtopics are often at a ‘similar’ sublevel?
For example, I’m interested in learning about the environment, but I can get bored researching just one area. Ex: Plastic pollution. But switching to another area (ex: energy storage) is enough to get me excited again.
But I don’t get similar excitement when switching from one sub-aspect of plastic pollution (ex: marine plastic pollution) to another sub-aspect (ex: waste infrastructure in developing countries). It’s like moving between nodes one layer deep into environmental issues excites me, but two layers deep doesn’t. Has that been similar or different for you with your greater years of experience? :-)
I agree there is something more exciting about diving into a whole new field, since the fruit become low-hanging again and progress is faster. I guess what I meant is specific to economics, or other fields that give you ‘thinking tools’; I underestimated how narrowing in on specific questions/fields teaches you how to learn, such that you can bounce to new disciplines and learn a lot much faster. Maybe another way to say that is that my focusing in on very particular subtopics was more temporary than I forecasted, but necessary for skill building.
It sounds like you still had to slog through the drudgery at times, but the drudgery didn’t last very long after you’d mastered the skills? And that’s because mastering the skills let you quickly iterate and hop to new ideas?
I think I’ve experience drudgery on the end of projects, when I feel like I’ve learned what I would like to about a sub-topic, but I still need to formalize everything in exacting detail for something like an academic publication. Hopping between and/or starting new projects—even within the same sub-discipline—is not boring for me.
However, things are probably different when you’re near the frontier of a sub-discipline and the research you’re working on is generating new knowledge, rather than reading lots of what others have done. It’s definitely more exciting. Admittedly, it takes a lot of hard work to get to that point in any field, but I’ve found it very worthwhile.
Hi Madhav,
That feeling has never completely left me—I still have varied interests and share your fear that I’m not digging into any single topic deep enough. The thing I’ve learned is that even if you pick something that feels narrow at the time (economics, for me) there are infinitely many interesting subtopics within that field to keep you interested, excited, and learning. Maybe that helps take some fear out of difficult-to-reverse decisions—like fields of study—if you’re worried you may get bored with it. This may not be true for all fields, but there are plenty where it is the case if that’s a concern of yours.
Figuring out the most useful skills to build is beyond my expertise, but you should certainly retain the belief that eventually you can and will build skills to create value! (And of course, check out 80000 hours if you haven’t).
Could you tell me more about the ‘switching subtopics’ part? Do you notice that the subtopics are often at a ‘similar’ sublevel?
For example, I’m interested in learning about the environment, but I can get bored researching just one area. Ex: Plastic pollution. But switching to another area (ex: energy storage) is enough to get me excited again.
But I don’t get similar excitement when switching from one sub-aspect of plastic pollution (ex: marine plastic pollution) to another sub-aspect (ex: waste infrastructure in developing countries). It’s like moving between nodes one layer deep into environmental issues excites me, but two layers deep doesn’t. Has that been similar or different for you with your greater years of experience? :-)
I agree there is something more exciting about diving into a whole new field, since the fruit become low-hanging again and progress is faster. I guess what I meant is specific to economics, or other fields that give you ‘thinking tools’; I underestimated how narrowing in on specific questions/fields teaches you how to learn, such that you can bounce to new disciplines and learn a lot much faster. Maybe another way to say that is that my focusing in on very particular subtopics was more temporary than I forecasted, but necessary for skill building.
It sounds like you still had to slog through the drudgery at times, but the drudgery didn’t last very long after you’d mastered the skills? And that’s because mastering the skills let you quickly iterate and hop to new ideas?
I think I’ve experience drudgery on the end of projects, when I feel like I’ve learned what I would like to about a sub-topic, but I still need to formalize everything in exacting detail for something like an academic publication. Hopping between and/or starting new projects—even within the same sub-discipline—is not boring for me.
However, things are probably different when you’re near the frontier of a sub-discipline and the research you’re working on is generating new knowledge, rather than reading lots of what others have done. It’s definitely more exciting. Admittedly, it takes a lot of hard work to get to that point in any field, but I’ve found it very worthwhile.
Thank you for the context :-) I really appreciate you taking the time to share your perspective here!