#4 - Multi-dimensional
how I rationalize trying to have fun and be good at many things
Aloha! It’s been one month since I’ve been back in Hawaii and time has flown by. This past week, I had some friends visiting from Denver so I was running around on fun and exhausting day trips. It was cool to show them around my favorite spots and through their reactions, recall what it was like the first time I cliff jumped in Waimea Bay, kayaked to the Mokes, or had the poke at Haleiwa no. 7.
I don’t have too much planned for this week and I’m going I can step outside of the day-to-day routine and maybe stumble upon something unexpected. Also, I dropped my phone through the elevator shaft from the 15th floor of my apartment building. At first, I thought I was going to get a new replacement phone immediately, but after noticing some weird feelings of not having a phone attached to me at all times, I wanted to see how long I can keep being phone-less. Also, my phone was still working once it landed at the bottom and there’s a dying chance that it can be recovered so we’ll see 🤷♂️.
What does multi-dimensional mean?
To me, someone is multi-dimensional if they fervently pursue multiple unrelated interests. This concept of an individual is also sometimes called a jack-of-all-trades or a Swiss army knife. However, these two terms imply being equally skilled at many things and not elite at any, whereas multi-dimensional people may eventually become extraordinarily talented in a handful of pursuits. Multi-dimensional describes a person’s strengths and their passions rather than ‘well-rounded’ which is similar, but I believe is the inverse and describes the lack of any major flaws. A key distinction is that these interests, whatever they may be, are seemingly disconnected and not necessarily required by one activity or another. For example, I would argue that someone who’s a chef and comedian is more multi-dimensional than a soccer player who also runs track.
We are pressured towards a singular career, passion, pursuit.
Society in the context of education and work are constructed in ways that steer us towards early specialization. I distinctly remember in elementary school being told that we are either strong in math + science or in English + social studies. It felt like we would all soon approach a fork in the road where we would go in one direction or another. Parents, teachers, and other kids further reinforced the idea that each student would naturally gravitate towards STEM or humanities. The unspoken implication is that we would be less talented in the other path. That might be true, but this false narrative resulting in me internalizing that the reason why I wasn’t enjoying English class is because I just wasn’t hardwired to be good at it.
Once I self-assigned myself to the STEM group, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I would tell myself that I enjoy math and science because I’m naturally analytical, but I also convinced myself of the exact opposite - that I don’t enjoy the humanities because I’m inherently bad at reading and writing. It’s ironic looking back because 80% of my job as a product manager is reading or writing in some form.
In college, there’s a different incentive structure than in all prior education. The primary goal is to graduate with your degree of choice. This poses multiple issues because we’re interested in multiple things and inversely not passionate about the entirety of a field’s breadth. The other goals are to pass with a high GPA (to land a good job) and to finish in a reasonable amount of time (to maximize ROI), but they’re both secondary to getting the actual degree.
High school heavily weights overall GPA because that’s the primary criteria for getting admitted into college. However, in college there’s more optionality and a much greater emphasis on performance in the specific major. When I was in high school, my mindset was to ace the math and science classes that I knew I was good at already and then brute force my way through the humanities to reach for the highest GPA possible.
Once I entered UC Berkeley, the incentives changed and I structured my schedule to complete my EECS major as soon as possible and I didn’t bother signing up for classes that weren’t required for my degree. As a result, I loaded up on required computer science classes, didn’t strive for getting As since the goal changed to completion, and graduated in just six semesters.
We end up believing that a college degree has a 1:1 mapping to a job like computer science : software engineer. In reality, it’s an N:1 mapping of skills to role. In hindsight, I regret not learning more psychology, cognitive science, design, writing, marketing, and branding. Today, in my role as a product manager, I draw on these skills on a daily basis and rarely use my computer science knowledge. But to be clear, I still wish I took courses in those fields not because I ended up with a different job than anticipated, but because I believe those areas teach relevant, complementary skills that overlap with the vast majority of professional jobs.
The classes taught in a classroom don’t reflect the real world because classes are taught in silos by different teachers who don’t plan their class material in coordination. In reality, the activities that we do, whether it’s for work or for play, have no built-in categorization or sorting filter that assigns a given task a subject like economics or writing or chemistry. The consultant creating a slide deck is drawing on their design, analytics, reading, writing, and storytelling skills. The software engineer who just wants to write code all day still has to collaborate in meetings, send Slack messages, and occasionally give a daunting presentation. Everything is intertwined.
The benefits of being multi-dimensional
Striving to be multi-dimensional is not the absence of focus or dedication. I would frame the multi-dimensional pursuit as being open-minded to trying new things, figuring out if you enjoy it, and then doubling down on the activities that resonate. In contrast, the single track method of specializing is more like doubling and tripling down on the one thing without as much exploration.
Unknown Unknowns
I remember when I was in elementary school I had multiple friends who would refuse to try new foods they had never tasted before and would justify it by saying “I don’t like that.” There was no way they knew they wouldn’t like it, yet they still refused to try. The journey to becoming more multi-dimensional starts with the acknowledgment of the existence of unknown unknowns.
Deep down inside, I have this lurking feeling that there is something out there that I haven’t tried yet that I know I would love. In order to find it and also minimize regret of not trying, I know I need explore. When I take a quick second to reflect on my current passions, the majority of them are all recent discoveries - things that I only picked up in the last few years like surfing, cooking, photography. This trajectory indicates there are unexplored topics that I have yet to experiment.
Multiple Fuel Sources
Just how a car’s battery charges up while you drive and burn gasoline, our own multiple energy sources get charged up from contrasting activities. Just how we need to rest and recover after intense physical activity like lifting weights or running, the inverse is true for things that sap our mental and creative energy. I’ve found that things like skiing, surfing, hiking help me feel mentally and creatively fueled up for my day job as a PM, but also for creative things like photography or writing. The opposite is true too. After sitting around all day, I’m reading to go outside and move around. It’s not just the time spent that enables the recharging - it’s also the shift in attention. When I’m surfing, I’m not thinking about work or anything else other than surfing. It’s the complete absence of the Other Things that allows me to feel fully rested and ready to come back to them once I’m done surfing. It seems counterintuitive, but the more intensely we pursue one passion, the more we’re able to take our mind off the others which in turn, allows each of their fuel tanks to recharge.
Hedging yourself
Having a singular focus can certainly lead to elite level outcomes, but it also comes with the risk of attaching your sense of self-worth to that one thing. It’s why professional athletes like Michael Phelps or Sugar Ray Leonard became depressed after stepping away from their respective sports. Similarly, intertwining yourself to your work can result in high performance in that job, but it also leads to an existential crisis when it’s not going well. Whether it’s athletes or content creators who attach their self-esteem to their social network metrics, there’s a high risk in singular mode. There could be an acute incident like a physical injury or moving away that prevents you from continuing to partake in your job, sport, or art which is one reason to strive towards being multi-dimensional. But also more commonly, people change and what we enjoy changes, so being obsessed and dedicated is only the optimal strategy when we’re 100% sure of it.
Up until junior year of high school, basketball was my main thing. I started with I was five and would go on to play on rec and AAU teams, attend summer camps, and play on the high school team. Long story short, I ended up developing severe patellar tendonitis in my knees and had to step away from it for over a year. Grappling with the absence of my main passion was a struggle to say the least. I would oscillate between trying to recover as quickly as possible to get back on the court and giving it up completely. In the end, I eventually found other things that I was interested in, but it wasn’t without a seemingly long agony of not knowing what else could be as fun and engaging as what I had lost. Perhaps if I had multiple passions going on at the same time, it would’ve been a less painful transition to go from losing basketball to spending more time on something else.
Comparing yourself to others eventually stops
First it becomes convoluted, then unproductive, then irrelevant to compare yourself to others. The act of comparison requires taking two things and evaluating them on one specific aspect. Being multi-dimensional renders that side-by-side measurement ineffective because it’s near impossible to find someone that has the exact same set of interests, skills, and experiences. It can still be positively reinforcing to compare yourself to someone else if it’s on a specific thing. For example, I like to run with my runner friends because I know they’re way better at running than I am and it motivates me. However, I don’t bother with the mental gymnastics of sizing myself up to my peers in a broad sense because it’s impossible to construct that comparison to begin with. By avoiding the comparison trap, I feel less behind and gravitate towards doing things that are fueled more by intrinsic motivation than external rat races.
Unexpected advantages of diverse interests
There are expected synergies from doing related activities like powerlifting and bodybuilding. However, in the case of multi-dimensionality, the pursuits are often more contrasting and therefore it’s less immediately noticeable how two seemingly unrelated things could complement each other. Some rapid fire examples that I’ve found in my own effort to becoming more multi-dimensional include:
Surfing & Skiing: Both share the counterintuitive sensation of falling forward. In order to ski or surf effectively, we need to go against our natural instinct to lean back and instead we need to put our weight forward to ski down the mountain or generate enough speed to pop up on the surfboard. This guy even believes that skiing is more similar to surfing than snowboarding.
Product Management & Writing: At the atomic level, so much of my job is just reading what other people write and then writing my own stuff. From starting this blog, I’ve already noticed that I pay closer to attention to what I’m writing when working - even for something as trivial as a one sentence Slack response.
Yoga & Surfing: The repetitive motion of paddling in surfing creates stiffness in the back and shoulders. I’ve found that doing yoga a few times per week helps to alleviate that tightness by incorporating the reverse of movements in surfing.
Photography & Hiking: In my experience, the most beautiful places are the hardest to get to and it requires me to be able to hike long distance, but also deal with the discomfort of backpacking and camping. On the flip side, if I improve in photography, I’ll want to go on bigger adventures to see what else I haven’t explored.
📚 What I’m reading
The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship
I just started reading this because as I alluded to in my first post, now is the time when I think a lot of my peers, myself included, are starting to wonder what we want to do with our lives. We got the new grad job and then maybe also got our first promotion, and the big question that’s left to answer is What’s Next?
🎵 What I’m listening to
A playlist of songs featuring the handpan, the chillest instrument I have ever listened to.
🙏 Shoutouts
Kevin Dahlstrom for his tweet on being multi-dimensional that led me down this rabbit hole
My funemployed friend Evan for taking to me about stuff like this at HCEC
Stanley, Jacky, Vivian, Jen, Wookie, and Gillian for coming over last night and chipping in on ‘An Evening with Bread’ It’s interesting how I have no desire to make complicated dishes for myself, but enjoy coming up with random recipes when I’m cooking for friends.
Leave a comment or message me on Twitter if you have any questions/feedback/ideas!