Why you’ve got to give up on being the best.

James Altucher talks about “idea sex”, which is simply combining different ideas and skills to come up with something unique.

Seth Godin, Jim Rohn (Tony Robbin’s mentor), Tom Bilyeu (founder of Quest Bars), and most all people say that you should be a master of one thing.

“When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain

Maybe all these people are right. But maybe it’s like saying, “Pick the right lotto numbers, and you’ll win!” Because your odds of being the best one thing is probably about the same odds as the lottery.

Consider that Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) mentions that Trump got where he has because he was good at so many different things, although not the best at any one things.

Tim Ferris shows that it’s possible to be good at multiple things as well. But many tend to think that doing more than one thing in life is impossible. Even Confucious jumps in on this and says, “The man that chases two rabbits, catches none.” There’s certainly a balance in between of becoming a master of one thing vs jack of all trades.

Most people are awful at most everything and decent at one thing (usually their profession). We’ll all unlikely be the “best” at any one established thing. I don’t think Quest bars are the best nutrition bars, but maybe Tom Bilyeu is very good at persuasion, business, nutrition, and being a chef, and mixed together that was enough to make a billion dollar empire.

A highly desired web developer that can code what you see (the front-end) and the brains (the back-end) of a website is a “full stack developer.” I think we’ll see more of the rise of the full stack person.

Maybe if you become very good (not even the best) at just a few things that you care about, stack those together, you inherently become the best at being you.