Sometimes a jack of all trades master of none is better than a master of one.
A jack of all trades can complete a task
I “increment the progress” of my tasks. Completion is optional
No I am a jack of all trades. I seem to do well at whatever I need to. Thanks to ADHD.
Yeah, I have a curiosity about how things work and it has allowed me to acquire a broad set of skills, including the skill of learning skills. Kinda lucky living in the internet age where so many things are much easier to learn than they would otherwise be.
I think a part of it is that when I learn something, I want to really understand it. It makes me not so great as a teacher, because I end up going into way too much detail (because those are what helped me learn), but it gives a deeper understanding that allows me to improvise on what I can do.
It also has shown me the value of people who understand how multiple specialties can fit together, especially when I go in only knowing one and can experience the shift from “why do they want this thing that way? What a silly requirement.” to “oh, ok, that makes sense, you need that to do another important thing I didn’t even realize was necessary”. And the best is when, now that I have some understanding of both sides, I can see a better solution that accomplishes both goals and makes everyone happy.
Actually, it’s the best for a little bit, until it’s time to present the idea to multiple teams working together, because if it’s a change, a lot of people aren’t interested, they just see the work to implement the change and not all of the other work that becomes easier or unnecessary after that’s done, so it can be frustrating.
I agree and have seen the same things many times. I can’t teach but I can do a great many things competently. This is not always appreciated by others.
A synergist is someone who understands a whole process covering multiple disciplines. It pays well if you can get the job. The problem with that is you have to overcome those that only know one discipline and they don’t take well to someone coming in and making changes they don’t understand because they can only see a part of the process and can’t see their part in the solution.
I could do that job but I’m not great with the hand holding necessary to get closed minds to shift to a new shape.
See this is why I like the channel Technology Connections. It’s all about going into the in-depth of every day household tech and how it’s all interconnected.
I don’t think I have ADHD however, it was often the norm to try to cultivate a ‘jack/jill of all trades’ skillset if you weren’t born wealthy.
I’m sure thats part of it. My schedule for this week includes preparing eight cisco switches for deployment in a distributed multi vlan environment. Rebuilding my daughters iphone XR and reassembling a 2000 dollar 3d printer with a bad linear bearing and two questionable steppers. On top of that I’ve finished a remix of a keychain in freecad and started on modifying another fidget for two color printing. I don’t think I would know how to do any of those things if I had been born in to money.
I have a coworker who is in his mid twenties who has undiagnosed ADHD and this is the first job he has ever had. He was hired as a favor to his family. He has never wanted for anything in his life and it shows. He isn’t stupid he just hasn’t ever had to struggle for anything. Its maddening to me. He thinks I don’t like him but in truth I just want him to realize he has ADHD. It wont do any good to tell him if he isn’t willing to accept it.
need? for me it’s want. need without want is where the problems come from
At work it starts with a need and then I want to know as much as possible about it. Need is the beginning of the process. Want is just the natural progression.
Oh yeah if somebody else has a need then the want comes naturally. But surely there’s days where the need is pressing and the want is out for a stroll on the town?
Less and less as I get older. I got medicated for it and I’m really better at handling, even using ADHD to work for me. I spent a day last weekend redoing a keychain stl for my daughter. Its a show she likes and I spent a good six hours hyperfocused on it and today I’m doing the finishing touches. I would not have been able to do that as quickly ten years ago.
can i have some of your adhd?
my adhd only does want, and if there’s need without want it’s torture to start (dishes)
I guess all I can say is give it time and drugs. I’m taking Qelbree right now and it works for me.
Can I report this? I’m in this meme and I did not consent to that.
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I am a jack of all trades because I have ADHD.
Exactly. There’s a reason why the full description is “Jack of all trades, master of none”
the full saying is “a jack of all trades, master of none is oft better than a master of one”
You got it right. Its a complement when said in full.
Not in today’s society apparently.
I’ve only had someone say that about me a few times. Every time they did I asked them to finish. They never knew that their insult was really half a complement.
“…ofttimes better than a master of one.”
Because we shouldn’t have masters, hierarchies are bad.
That’s not really a hierarchy thing though.
Just a measure of how skilled / experienced someone is, and how suitable it is for them to be teaching someone else.
I think we need more people sharing their knowledge and we don’t need the blind leading the blind.
your mom is a measure of how skilled/experienced someone is and how suitable it is for them to be teaching someone else!¹
¹One i have disappointed profoundly.
… 9/10 response. I chuckled!
I CAN BE BOTH!
Humans are literally Jack of All Trades. The big evolutionary advantage of brain power is that it lets animals adapt to new things in a single lifetime, rather than having to evolve adaptations to it over generations, and humans primary evolutionary advantage is our massive generalized brain power.
Capitalism says to specialize, human nature says to be a jack of all trades.
I assume this community will disagree strongly, but ADHD honestly does not seem like an actual disorder (as in, an objective detriment, and one that evolution would select against in the long term), so much as just our brains not being particularly suited to capitalism and capitalists gas lighting the masses into thinking that’s abnormal.
Some guy wrote a book about this but basically it’s hunters (in the Hunter-Gatherer sense) stuck in a farmers world.
SO back when humans primarily hunted and were nomadic, prior to the advent of agriculture and sedentary farming (where seasonal planning and forecasting was required), a lot of required traits for survival: high-vigilance, impulsivity, and novel-seeking - were what made great hunters and survivalists.
People with ADHD just have the wrong OS for this era or more like they are peak human (Windows XP) and current humans are bloated Windows 11… it’s evolutionary enshittification.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
I often wonder if we’re supposed to be as smart as we are, like in general. I see some people and think “what a fucking moron” but like put them next to basically any other animal on the planet and they’re doing alright.
Would be a fun movie idea, the creative and adhd people run the world and are seen as normal, instead of the reverse.
I mean ~80% of the world’s population takes stimulants daily in the form of caffeine. Childhood ADHD rates are now at ~12%, and the testing criteria for ADHD revolves largely around whether it negatively impacts your life.
If everyone else is increasingly taking stimulants for it and you’re not, then you’re more likely to feel negatively impacted since you’ll stand out, which is likely to increase the diagnosis rate further.
I don’t think it’s unlikely that we see a world where like half the population has an ADHD diagnosis, and/or the treatment for ADHD (i.e. more effective stimulants then caffeine), become over the counter.
I assume this community will disagree strongly, but ADHD honestly does not seem like an actual disorder…
Not fitting into Capitalism has nothing to do with common ADHD traits such as lack of emotional regulation, time blindness, and our tendency towards risky behaviors.
So yeah, I do strongly disagree with your attempt to blame the negative aspects of ADHD on an economic system…because it’s bullshit.
I could be anything from an Mesopotamian King to a rider in the Mongol horde to a Medieval Peasant and my brain would still have the same damn problems.
Not fitting into Capitalism has nothing to do with common ADHD traits such as lack of emotional regulation, time blindness, and our tendency towards risky behaviors.
All of those traits generally make you a less predictable and harder to manage worker. Capitalism absolutely cares about those traits very significantly.
I could be anything from an Mesopotamian King to a rider in the Mongol horde to a Medieval Peasant and my brain would still have the same damn problems.
This is literally impossible to say. Your brain would still work similarly, but it would have been shaped by entirely different stimuli and environment, so it would not be working the same. It’s also entirely possible that those tendencies are beneficial in different historical contexts. Other systems like feudalism may also similarly view ADHD as a detriment, but that doesn’t mean that every system / context does.
Person above you likely has never experienced executive disfunction.
I need to do this, I actually want to do this, why am I not doing this?
Or the ever popular extension of that: I’ve not done it so long that I’m insanely uncomfortable about it and will actively avoid the space in which it is in and do other things (read: nothing) while obsessing about the thing you need to do and the fact that you haven’t done it until you nearly have a nervous breakdown
The task: laundry, dishes, sweeping, etc
Putting off yardwork untill your lawnmower can no longer handle the density of plant matter. And then just calling the area a wild flower field, or pollinator haven or some other excuse for just not touching it.
Thanks for reminding me that my raised beds have needed tending… I will not be taking questions on how long it’s been since I last did it
Don’t describe my career so accurately
One preceded the other.
I’m a millwright with adhd. I’m a fully qualified jack of all trades.
How do you like millwright? I’m looking for a career change and that was something I was considering.
I enjoy it well enough for work. I have an aptitude for it and can fit in the tight spaces I need to in the role that I’m in. It’s all the issues of being a mechanic with the added joy of your machine can be as big as a building.
I know in Canada with a red seal I have a lot of options if I am willing to travel/relocate. The pay is on par with other trades if your boss doesn’t want massive turnover.
That’s good to know. I’m pretty good at fitting into tight spaces too, and think working on machines would be really interesting. My dad actually did millwright apprenticeship for a year before changing to welding, so I’ve spoken to him about it too, but it’s good to have multiple perspectives, especially from someone who actually does it as a career. I’m also Canadian, so that’s good to know too.
One of the things I have noticed is that there are more and more electronics on things. So if you do decide to become a millwright pay attention in the controls block.
Good to know. Thanks for the info, I’ll keep it in mind.
Looking at the tin whistle I’ve had for over a decade… it’s just been gathering dust… but who knows, maybe I’ll have motivation to learn it once more.
I like to tell people: “if there’s one thing I know, it’s trivia!”
We let the NTs use that term because the real answer would terrify them. It’s all pattern recognition. I’m not “good” at any particular skill but the world is transparent to me. If I understand how something works I can recreate its function.
To them it looks like this is happening in real time. To me, the constantly spinning wheels in my mind grab traction for a fraction of a second giving the illusion of progress.
I’ve got good fine motor control, which means that I can sew, knit, roll a joint, braid hair, make a pastry, seal a dumpling, fold origami, draw, sculpt, paint nails, pick a lock, and most other fine dexterity tasks, excluding musical instruments.
This sounds like bragging, but I didn’t do anything to earn the ability to do this, I literally just do it and it works. I’m not proud of it (though I’m occasionally proud of the things I can craft) and I don’t think anyone else is unskilled because it doesn’t work when they do it.
I know exactly what you mean. I got the musical talent version. I remember being in 10th grade in music class and the teacher passed out band instruments to everyone in the class so we could play with them and laugh at how bad we all sounded. I was late that day and got the only thing left over. A trombone. A week later barely a handful of the students could get a solid note or two out of their random trumpets or clarinets, etc. I was playing “When the Saints go Marching in” with flourishes like a New Orleans brass band.
I got an entry level job sanding military helmets a couple years ago. The kind of job that hires anyone to do the shit work. Two and a half years later I am in charge of the most complicated product the company makes. I’m now the only person in the world who makes the JHMCS helmet. (Google it)
But that makes me a jack of all trades. ADHD is just the reason I go from one thing to the next
