I read this quote the other day and it really struck a cord with me.

I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession and degree of specialization that doesn’t appeal to me.
-Yvon Chouinard founder and owner of Patagonia, Inc.

Replace the phrase ’sport or activity’ with ‘technology or project’ and you have me. CSS, C#, PHP, Photoshop, SQL, MySQL, Flash, GIS, etc… etc… I’ve had a passion to learn each… I learn each more than the average bear, but never to the point of mastery. It really frustrates me. I wish I had the focus to learn at least one technology to a 90-95% mastery level. But alias that goes against my nature. I really need to think about this… do I remain a random generalist, or become more focused, albeit, limited specialist.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.