Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

She calls people like us "Scanners" and claims that our diversity of interests is not a weakness, but a strength. Then goes on techniques to make this skill work for us.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594863032/

Ex: OP wants to read "textbooks to learn basic concepts" and "swim in their ideas". That doesn't equal competence.

However, if you have strong expertise in a particular field and can find a way to utilize the ideas/learnings from a different field you're interested in then it might be useful. Big if though.

Single-field people tend to be hilariously bad at diffuse reasoning relative to what you'd expect from a person that competent.

No one is going to pat you on the head for learning the basics of a field 10x faster than someone else because the basics have very little value by themselves.

I say all of this as someone who is very curious and likes learning about new things.

95% of the time you'll be greeted with a "huh...interesting" and no follow up, but in my experience that remaining 5% can be pretty awesome when you stumble upon something that solves a problem in a way nobody else imagined.

I have been lucky enough to turn my passion into a successful software career working for someone else but I’ve always wanted to be self employed.

https://joeldare.com/im-a-scanner

Write a blog, and then create a video for each blog post, and upload it to YouTube (where the eyeballs willing to consume intellectual material are).

Also do livestreams.

Start interviewing anyone who will take you seriously. Set a goal for who your dream interviewee is.

Do this for a couple years, putting out content every week, and then glue & edit all that stuff down into a book that says something interesting, useful, and at least somewhat new.

Publish that book. Get interviewed yourself by other people.

Being a writer is not cliche. There's an enormous world there and a career you can build, and I think it's a very good idea to pursue that, so that you can get paid for pursuing your curiosity. In 10 years or so, if you keep at it, you could be doing very well for yourself and have "built" some things you're really proud of.

I absolutely want to interview people, dig their brains, hear their stories, etc.! This reminds me of how I used to go to my profs office hours because I just loved hearing them talk passionately about their subjects.

A question, livestream of what?

He just reads a bunch of stuff and then does a livestream talking about current events and connecting them with what he's read (plus jokes). There's also a lot of reacting to YouTubers' video essays and the news.

Bullet points for livestreaming subject matter:

* Reacting to the news.

* Reacting to YouTubers / web content.

* Q&A sessions (this is key--the strength of livestreaming is audience interactivity, and that audience will be fiercely loyal).

* Spitballing -- You can give a rough version of a presentation you might give in a video.

* Live writing / creating -- This sounds crazy, but people actually watch people write code, create music etc.

Additional considerations:

* Create a ritual that people show up for. Livestreaming and video audiences love rhythm.

* You don't have to be that entertaining -- people often turn to Twitch/YouTube to fill a similar need in their life that they use podcasts for -- background noise / a distraction where they can feel like they're in the room with a public figure / community.

More what I'm saying is that the environment requires shedloads of marketing acumen. Not that that's impossible to learn, but it means you're either getting someone to sell it for you (i.e., a publisher) or have to do a lot of work you probably don't love (i.e., not writing).

Or you could be like me and make stuff for fun, and never expect to get paid for it!

There's bonus value in getting paid because it's a relatively simple metric for "how good of a writer am I".

It involves a wide set of skills and approaches. The subject matter is basically anything that exists. It doesn't require money and you can play for free on sites like gjopen.com. I recommend the book Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock as a good introductory read.

You may find you're good or terrible at it, but most people can get better. I'm biased, but I do think more fields/levels of leadership could benefit from understanding how to get better at probabilistic thinking---or at least to have a respect for the arts of prediction and seeking out better counsel.

One thing that might be good to learn is how to find the interesting aspects of any subject, and how even within fields there can be quite a lot of breadth to the knowledge. Because to do useful work often you're going to have to focus on some area for a long period of time. If you can also develop good people skills, then being able to appreciate a bigger picture can make management another path to remaining stimulated.

What markets have more interesting breadth of coverage + have decent betting limits? I had the impression cftc or sec limit this to avoid become a regulated security.

You gotta do some work.

After I read your post, I realized that you might be interested on how "Niklas Luhmann and his Zettelkasten" became a success.

You also might want to check the book: How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking by S. Ahrens

Zettelkastenp[0] has been mentioned a lot here in HN.

Software like notion, roam, emacs org-roam, obsidian, etc, can support this system.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten

Consider working with a non-profit, your breadth of interest can be a huge benefit to a small team. Small teams often lack the headcount to realize when they have a problem with a simple alternative or how to tackle certain kinds of more specialized problems like surveys or non-profit taxes or heck, when I was a kid I remember going learning to typeset newsletters because no one else really knew how... like any underfunded small team you have to fill in the gaps as well as you can.

Stuff that you find trivial might seem unattainable to others there and a breadth of experience can provide a lot of context and research directions that would otherwise be missed. And if it serves a social good that you care about all the better.

But most importantly, the reason for the activity should be personal/internal. Otherwise the depressing reality of 0 will hit hard. I believe we're similar, with multiple interests, that's why I started my blog[1] and podcast, The Language of My Soul. But, the only audience is myself when I check it works fine haha.

I'd suggest writing. Trying to bridge together knowledge should be interesting. It's also very low commitment, just 5 minutes is good enough.

[1] https://langsoul.com

I don't know about that. And I find the generalists do the hiring.

David Perell's dime video was the final clue I needed — pick your center and just go https://youtu.be/gRDopONrnHE

Happy to chat if it helps. Who knows, maybe you could help me. I’m relearning software engineering now after being out of it since school (2004).

More recently, AI, software engineering, business strategy, and a tiny bit of marketing, data science, and venture capital.

The other thing that helps is that I always try to have a showable/shippable output. Nothing that's just in my head or scattered notes that wouldn't make sense to others.

A fav quotes, "The reason you want to be creative is because you consume every day. To balance out your energy, you also need to create every day." and “Don’t tell me. Show me!”

1/ Postmodern philosophy: (re)consider the possibility of pursuing advanced studies in postmodern philosophy, because that is one of the fields where all your bits of knowledge can coagulate and be put at good use. There are academic institutions that can accommodate part-time schedules, or where most teachings are offered in time of the year that facilitate part-time learners;

2/ (Visual) Arts: An art practice can benefit greatly from a solid theoretical foundation of the subject-matter that it tries to address. I am not speaking of arts pursued for the sake of them. I am referring to contemporary art engaging with some of the most pressing socio-political challenges our societies face.

Set aside the fields above, all other fields can benefit from some non-zero degree of interdisciplinarity, but are hardly all encompassing and would leave part of interests less leveraged then others.

I salute you and wish you well.

I also have a lot of unrelated interests and ideas for projects I lack the depth to get off the ground.

The real breakthrough for me occurred while I was using Minecraft to practice improvisational comedy on YouTube and realized that I can take any infeasible idea that would never happen like "What if I gave a $40k speech to Goldman Sachs?" and added "... in Minecraft?" to it.

I made a lot of videos people didn't get for about a decade, and now I quit my day job as a LAMP dev and make most of my living off tips from viewers.

Best of luck!

Links please, but would actually like to know who you are.

But I suspect that if you love learning about lots of different things, you'd enjoy sharing those things too (and teaching!). Blog, podcast, youtube videos.

If you're in a major city, check and see if there's groups that could scratch your itch. Odd Salon (https://oddsalon.com/) is really cool if you're in the bay or NYC - people give talks about weird bits of science and history.

However, if a team consisting of an expert in each of your disciplines would outperform you, then you have to consider whether you’re mixing your disciplines creatively enough to have an edge.

One powerful mix is the ability to have breadth of knowledge as you mention but also the ability to dive deep into one specific problem when needed.

Turns out this guy's just like you! He took literally every single paper built up to 500 credits for his post grad. And it is exactly this multidisciplinary approach that lead to his invention which is only commercialisable due to his intuitions in manufacturing processes...

I firmly believe there's value in broad interests and no time is spent unwisely. Just remember to step up when it's your queue, best of luck and even if you don't think you did anything I'm sure at least the swimming through the content was enjoyable trip all by itself..

At least in my life, I've discovered that it's important to NOT identify with your interests. While this is a generally important rule, broad interests are toxic to the psyche if you declare your worth by them, since the implementation will vary (e.g., your psych and history may be spot-on, and you might suck at understanding philosophy).

I've read a few Paul Graham essays on the subject, and they're worth poking around. My takeaway is that you are free to do what you love, but find a day job in the meantime. My bias is to steer clear of academia, but you may fare better in that group of people than me if you're not the out-of-the-box thinker type.

And, for your second question, find a way to create. You're clearly hitting up against the wall I've hit against: how do you make an "original thing" that thousands of other people haven't done already?

The answer to that, put very simply, is that you are a unique person. Your personality, sure, but whatever we philosophically represent as the "soul" is the thing that fuels all your creative endeavors, and it flavors everything.

For example, I used to be a fan of the Myst computer game, and have recently been poking around with its sequels. You can actually feel over the series the dilution of original "spark" that the two brothers had in the original.

So, find an expressive form to make what you want. It doesn't have to be fancy, but once you incubate a vision of it, you'll naturally fill in the blanks of what it would be. Off the top of my head, building out an LMS using existing information would be a good start, or finding a way to index/archive more finicky aspects of large repositories of information (such as associative keywords toward economics).

[1] I would personally recommend Obsidian as a tool; check out this recent discussion on the PARA methodology https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30916260

Right now I'm expanding that to slowly build up a hosting company (a cluster running on Docker Swarm and Gluster with a lot of tools and scripts already), jammed basically all fundamental music theory in my head and working hard to apply that, make YouTube videos, do streaming on Twitch, do 3D stuff, work with a game engine, graphic/web design, being capable to have professional-level conversations about therapy and always interested to learn more on the sidelines, doing voice acting and impressions.. well.. etc. because basically I gravitate towards more stuff and the list goes on. It turns into this rambling list real quick because I still have no way to synthesize it all into something that can be quickly and simply understood. I don't know if I ever can. My theory so far is that that becomes easier once all those skills go more into the unconscious competence stage.

It comes with the territory of being profoundly gifted for me and I wouldn't want it any other way. The main challenge for me is trying to find a way to have income and still be busy with all these things. Perhaps in some time in the future I'll be able to combine a lot/all of these things and sit in some ridiculous hyperniche.

So with all that, I have no idea where I'm going but going there is too much fun to let up and I'll fight forever to keep going that way. A confusing state and a paradoxical one since it goes past understanding to understand a lot. Wish I could help. I just wanted to share.

For almost every discipline you need years of practice and appliation to be able to understand it deeper than most.

Don't take this the wrong way, but here's an XKCD somewhat related to this topic: https://xkcd.com/863/

It is very important to truly know yourself and design your life based on that.

I was born into enough wealth that I did not have to think about food, clothes, treatment, housing, etc. -the very basics. But, by no way were we rich.

So, I knew I had to work.

What work? After some disillusionment, a lot of naiveness-led-rigidity, I knew that it was anything that paid well, had any impact, was intellectually stimulating, and had smart, sophisticated (I am the judge of that, not the society's definition) colleagues.

I was focused on one particular field that turned out to be wrong.

The lesson here is not to be stringent and knowing yourself.

I am like you, too. I am generally curious about all imaginable ways of life. My curiosity is all-encompassing. I just like to know how stuff came to be- how much can be known and how much can't. I understand the limit of platonic, epistemic knowledge. But I would like to form better pictures of everything around me. Is the Standard Model approach right? How did it come to be? Is quantized time real? How did the German nation come to be? What did Nagarjuna mean by zero? What effects do Godel's Incompleteness Theorem have on the future of Math?

None of these are directly related to my work.

But I like to know. Right now, I am learning Quantum Computing, Ethereum (I am opposite of a crypto-bro, and this tech interests me deeply), wester classical music, and Madhyamika Philosophy.

But I do not get paid to do these.

My approach is- aside from work, family time, do things that deeply interest me. Let those areas influence my work and what I am, enrich myself, and be better. I also read a lot of interesting non-fiction and big fat novels like War and Peace and Don Quixote for entertainment.

I will tell you one thing that no one else told you in this thread-

_It is worth it to form deep expertise in a narrow area_.

By doing this, you not only become an expert in one area, but also learn how to become an expert in other areas.

Do not be opposed to the idea of "narrow areas". Because once you have the taste of "depth" in a "narrow area", you are forever hooked to that feeling. This will aid you to learn more in other fields.

I will tell you, but I have absolutely no proofs or reference, that true depth in some areas also helps you find connections better. It makes you learn better, in general.

Your aversion to narrow areas will cost you dearly, in my humble opinion.

Like others said, you can be a media person, but not a scholar with deep understanding of reality.

If you want to have a much better understanding of how reality works- in a much more informed, much more structured way- go deep into some and skim through lot.

_Depth is a common meta_.

This is my understanding. I am not claiming to be truly right.

I have started reading something that might interest you-

Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. They are both designers and taught class at Stanford that taught students how to design their life based on design principles.

It is a short book- unlikely to "change" my life or yours. But might learn new helpful things. Very relevant to your current situation.

The way I deal with this is constant invention, however I lack the forethought of journaling...

So I am changing this, I have a number of physical paper graph-paper-based journals that I capture my thoughts in now.

I FUCKING REGRET that IU have not been journaling all my life. 45 years down the drain.

The best engineers I know (Looking at you JDB) all keep good journals.

Write down everything you have done each day - even if it is *"slept on the couch and got a killer nap"*

I've found myself in a similar point in life (currently 29). When I was young, everyone encouraged me to learn, and I think I get intrinsic pleasure from it, so like you I've done an enormous amount of reading on a variety of topics.

# Ways being extremely curious can be bad that nobody tells you about

Not long ago, I started to feel discouraged because it didn't seem like the rules I was following in my life were actually making my life better. I think this was for a few reasons:

- For a long time I was reading articles on HN, Twitter, and elsewhere, so my attention was being extremely divided. When I became aware of this, I killed all my newsfeeds and just started reading books. Obviously I'm still here on HN, but I'm happy to say I read a fraction of what I used to.

- I prioritize learning something interesting over doing things that would make my life better, so I struggle with taking care of myself (e.g. cooking, household chores). I often wonder if I'm actually using learning as a distraction from anxiety.

- I started to realize most of the things I learn I don't really understand. This seems to be for a few reasons. 1) Reality has a surprising amount of detail, 2) a lot of authors honestly aren't that good, 3) I'm not always criticizing what I'm reading to see if it makes sense, sometimes just suspending disbelief with the hope that it'll all come together in time. But, if you don't actually understand things, you can't really do much with them. I've been aiming to instead of generically learn, learn with the aim of building tangible skills, because I think that would make me happier.

- I prioritize learning over reflecting on the higher-order reason for learning things in the first place. This is mostly because trying to figure out a high-level system to organize what I actually want to do with my life hasn't really seemed to get me anywhere, so I've resigned myself to looking at all the things I'm interested in learning, sticking with it for a few months, and then reevaluating. Not a system I'd recommend but it sort of works. I think I need to study philosophy; self-reflection for hours in coffee shops doesn't seem to actually lead to anything but disorganized, loosely associated vagaries.

- An extreme emphasis on reading can cause you to miss a huge part of your life, which is your conscious, subjective experience of things, who/what that spontaneous process that is "you" really is, and how to express it. For the longest time, I dismissed this as being useless to discuss or learn about because I felt if something couldn't be expressed in words, it was bullshit and it wasn't worth spending time on. The objective is nice and rational, but the subjective is still something you can gain knowledge of, and some people who are really in touch with art/fashion/film/interior design/music are shaping our emotional responses in ways that you just don't even notice if you limit yourself to books. A friend encouraged me to pick up an art to help develop this type of self-awareness better, and it's been a struggle, but one I'm grateful for.

# Explorers

Still, I think pleasure from learning is a valuable trait. One thing I've been reflecting on is Bartle's Taxonomy of Player Types [1], which would probably categorize us both as Explorers:

> Explorers, dubbed "Spades" (♠) for their tendency to dig around, are players who prefer discovering areas, and immerse themselves in the game world. They are often annoyed by time-restricted missions as that does not allow them to traverse at their own pace. They enjoy finding glitches or a hidden easter egg.

This model seems interesting to me for a few reasons:

- My friend, an Achiever type, and I, started playing an MMO game back in 2020 and we ended up completely dominating the in-game economy. I think this was because he was extremely pragmatic about moving us toward our goals, and I was able to really think hard about what we really needed to do in order to multiply our wealth.

- I've been reflecting on my career as a software engineer, and I think it wears me out because tech culture is so results oriented, which doesn't suit how I like to do things. I really don't care about making money or velocity, I just want to understand things and let my skills compound.

- I think this interest in deeply understanding how a system works and then being able to build new things with those principles was really valuable in being able to build/see the future in the game. I think it would work well in the real world as well. I've been looking for a word for this idea at a broader level, and I think it's essentially "critical thinking", something I don't think I ever properly learned in college. If I could do this in more parts of my life, I think I could do amazing things. I've been thinking of learning to write as a way to get better at this. But I agree, I don't really want to start a blog- I hate the attention economy and all it entails. I think all great writing is essentially criticism, but so is all great art and all great products, so I'd rather push in that direction after developing the ability to critically write/think.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_type...

I wrote this quickly, so apologize if it feels half-baked, but hope it stirs some thoughts. Am hoping others will have more to say on some of these points because honestly it's been an existential struggle for me trying to understand what to do with life. SWE hasn't really felt like my true calling lately.

Often a Noble prize in economics detracts from the world instead of adding to it.

Psychology: I've used it.

HEXACO/Big 5, I've used it to find my girlfriend and test on compatibility. How do you do that? Well, I score high on "openness to experience", I can spot other open people from a mile away. Conscientious vs non-conscientious people are also quite easily recognizable by how rigid/organized they are. When a person disagrees sometimes and agrees a few times then they're moderately agreeable. Extraversion/introversion is easy to spot as well. Neuroticism is harder to spot but anxiety (or lack thereof) is correlated. There! No questionnaire needed! Though, when I knew my GF for 3 months I also gave her a questionnaire for fun which was stating the obvious: her personality was like mine. The most fun way in which you can see that is by looking at both our YouTube feeds, it's quite similar.

Priming: the idea of priming is nebulous due to the publication crisis, but it did teach me to care about the atmosphere you're setting.

Statistics: using statistics in psychology made me better at data science

Neuropsychology: one topic raised interesting questions, which was: can we want something and hate it (yes!)? Can we like something and not want it (yep)? This taught me a lot about certain aspects of addiction.

Neuroplasticity: awesome concept. Neuroplastic behavior has been observed in meditators and hardcore gamers. My guess is that anything you'll do intensely for a few hours will change your brain somewhat.

The publication crisis: many things in psychology are bullshit because there's too much of a publish/perish culture and because of that reproduction of research is an issue. This is especially why you need to put whatever research you read into practice. By using it yourself, you'll find out quickly whether it's research you can meaningfully build on yourself.

Intuition: you can trust your intuition iff (1) you've had many examples of whatever you're intuiting about, (2) the rules were structured like chess or poker (expected value + law of large numbers is needed -- see (1) ) and (3) you can sense you're own intution in the first place. Because of this I immediately realized that people that say "yup I'm good with people" might make the catastrophic flaw of thinking that they're also good with people from an entirely different culture! I've seen this happen up close. The reason is simple: you haven't seen anyone from an entirely different culture, so whatever intuition you have I would not trust it.

Just some thoughts about psychology. I've been an enthusiast about psychology for about 15 years and got academically schooled in it 10 years ago.

Keep doing this! It’s more fun to learn a little about a lot than a lot about a little. It’s easy, feels good, and is a good way to pass the time.

Why change?