Experiment

2021-08-16

some advice I got from someone older than me is that they wished they experimented in more fields (e.g. music, instead of focusing on one field)

when we're younger we tend to study more subjects then specialize in a particular area as we get older

but if you specialize in one field then you won't experience the initial creativity one gets from not being an expert in the field

also recall how you can't relate ideas if you don't have knowledge of those ideas

e.g. when I was learning japanese I was able to relate ideas in japanese to ideas in french, even if those ideas wouldn't make sense for other people

you may have read gladwell's outliers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)

anyway the gist is 10,000 hours of extensive focus in one area is how long it takes to become very good at that thing (some areas take longer, some take less, etc)

the person that gave the advice wish they divided their 10,000 hours up among multiple fields instead of putting in multiple 10,000 hours into one field

I believe that part of the reason you should divide your 10,000 hours up into multiple fields is because you get to experience the initial creativity of being unknowledgeable in that field

being able to experience this multiple times is what I believe drives the ability for creative individuals to relate multiple subjects together and produce innovative work (whether in art, science, or something else entirely)