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hey this is Leo for actualised org and I am at you with another profound quote specialization is for insects a human being should be able to change a diaper plan an invasion butcher a hog con a ship design a building write a sonnet balance accounts build a wall set bones 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 that is a quote from Robert Heinlein author of Starship Troopers science fiction novel ok so what is this quote about specialization is for insects I love this idea there's something powerful here and the power of this quote lies in the fact that as our society advances we tend to get more and more specialized and we tend to be putting ourselves in positions where we become very focused on one or two things in our life that we get really good at and this is usually revolves around your career your your vocation we get so focused on that and the pressures of the world the pressures of business the pressures of the marketplace are forcing us to specialize that we lose touch with really who we are the robustness of being a human being and on the one hand market forces are pushing us to be more specialized and by more specialized I mean if you're an engineer you need to be a specific type of engineer you need to maybe be an electrical engineer and then within Electrical Engineering you need to pick a subspecialty of something maybe computers and within computers you need to pick another subspecialty of maybe you work on micro processors chips microchips and so you work on that and maybe within that there's another subspecialty another subspecialty and another subspecialty and ultimately what you end up doing is working with in a very very very narrow narrow slice of what is possible for you out there in life and then what happens is that the rest of your life is kind of like a little appendage a little appendage to that specialty that you're really good at and maybe if you're for example a graphic designer then you're a graphic designer but you start to specialize within something in graphic design so maybe you do graphic design for magazines and maybe a specific type of magazine you only do graphic design for health and fitness magazines and maybe even more specialized than that it's health and fitness magazines for elderly women or something like that right and you're very focused on that and that becomes your niche there's something powerful in that and I actually think that you need to have that you need to be able to develop a deep proficient C in something to be successful life but there's also something lost there so you also need to scale back and step back and become really that concept of being a Renaissance man whatever happened to that idea of being a Renaissance man just the value that was placed on that to be a full robust fulfilled human being to be like really fulfilled in your soul I think you need this you need to challenge yourself to be a student of life and I don't even now mean just psychology I mean have broad interests be interested in everything in life I like to tell myself that I can literally be interested in anything and I am I have diverse interests and I'm interested in lots of things I'm interested in cooking I'm interested in fitness I'm interested in psychology obviously because I'm shooting these videos I'm interested in science I'm interested in cosmology I'm interested in philosophy I'm interested in literature I'm interested in history I'm interested in biographies I'm interested in politics and social dynamics I'm interested in computer programming I'm interested in graphic design I'm interested in fine art I'm interested in human relations I'm interested in management I'm live interested in business I'm interested in marketing I'm interested in like all of it whatever the list is I'm curious about it some things more than others but generally any topic I could find myself being interested in I mean I love art I love just the beauty of looking at a nice painting like a classic painting like a van Gogh going to a gallery looking at a van Gogh up in person or looking at a Cezanne we're looking at any of the post impressions which I really love I love to look at just paintings and books because I don't get to go to museums that often but I like to look at paintings and books I like to look at graphic design I like to look at designs of web sites to me even though that can have value in my business I like to do that just for itself just for the sake of it I'm curious and I'm curious about history I'm curious about how human Humanity has evolved I'm curious about all the historical events that have happened in all historical figures figures like Hitler and Hitler was like Napoleon and I'm interested in philosophers from ancient times and I'm interested to pick the brains of of great figures in history both figures that were great in a good way and figures that were great in an evil way like Hitler I have books on Hitler sometimes people come to my apartment and they see my bookshelf and one of the baddest books I've got is this book and it's just a says it's been bright white and red letters it says Adolf on it and people are kind of shocked like why do you have a book about Hitler because it's fascinating I mean aren't you fascinated about that phenomenon aren't you fascinated about a human being who created such a profound impact in the 20th century who has such a profound impact who whose actions and thoughts literally influenced the trajectory of humanity they have led to the deaths of millions tens of millions of people but also not only that but looking beyond that just seeing the whole repercussions of all that what that led up to the technological advances the you know the motivations that Hitler had like he was that's fascinating to me how could a man like that come about what drove him so you know I think that everyone should be fascinated by Hitler I think everyone should be fascinated by by philosophy I think everyone should be fascinated by science and history and art like this is this is life why are you not fascinated by this stuff and there's two points here one point is that this opens you up this really makes you a humanist this gives you a a worldly view of what the hell is going on it makes you more open-minded and what it does is it builds wisdom in you so first of all it's just beautiful this is something that you can take a lot of pleasure in just for its own sake but also it builds that wisdom which actually find is quite rare and I find that it's powerful in subtle ways so right now you might be listening to this video and thinking well how does this apply to my job or my life or my love life or something like that and there's no direct easy way to say that reading books about history and science will have direct application but actually they will because what's going to happen is that over time as you're reading and you're studying these subjects and you're just curious and you're expanding yourself and you're you're being fully human what you start to develop in yourself is you develop a sense of judgment in a sense of the wisdom so you're able to have a more keen perceptive mind that will then spill over into all areas of your life it will most definitely impact your business and how you manage your business what's going to happen with businesses if you become someone who is worldly who knows history who knows science who understands politics and his interest in all these things first of all you're going to have more creative ideas with the directions that your business can go in you're also going to be more conscious about the impact of that business on the world at large and on people so you're going to run a more conscious business the values of that business will not just be about making money it will be about making a positive impact also you are going to be more of a long-term thinker and you're going to be able to deal with some of those tough decisions that you have to make in business you're going to be able to deal with them better you're going to be able to be a better strategist you're going to see very far down the road you're going to make very wise decisions rather than making some of those easy quick fix decisions that might do something for you right now but eventually will lead to problems and catastrophes down the road so in the end developing this kind of wisdom and judgment can really make the difference between whether your business is going to fail or succeed I've definitely seen this in my life so that's just one powerful example how about in your relationships it will have an effect there how about in your personal development that wisdom and judgment is going to have a huge effect on your personal development how about your hobbies do you think your hobbies will be influenced by this yeah I mean basically your whole life the way you raise your family the way you educate your kids the way you interact with your spouse the way that you interact with people the leader the kind of leader that you are the kind of manager that you are if you're in a leadership or in a management position your vocabulary your ability to spell your understanding of issues your ability to be conned and to be swindled and to be susceptible to the shady marketing that is so rampant in society nowadays to to withstand that even your ability to stay healthy will be affected by this right so this is the power of this idea do not become too specialized and this can be a challenge because you have these forces these forces in the marketplace that are telling you to specialize in specialize and specialize but you got to do is you got to kind of be a bit of a rebel and yes on the one hand you do have to specialize sometimes and you should with your work but also at the same time you have to step back create opportunities for you to build your worldliness to build your understanding of culture of life of science when you do that you become a well-educated grounded human being and this is part of the self-actualization process is a self actualized human is not someone who's just really good at one thing you can find excellent people who are really I would say stupid they're so limited in what they know that they're just very mechanical they become a machine and they might become a very efficient and good machine but then what do they really know about life what did they know about humanity what do they just experience overall for example maybe take someone like an Olympic athlete an Olympic athlete trains their ass off for years and years and years really really hard and they become really really good at what they do and to me that's a beautiful thing but also I think that they sacrifice because they become so specialized they become like an insect they become very good at mechanically doing that one thing but they might sacrifice some of these larger larger things I mean do they understand business do they understand marketing do they understand psychology I'm sure some of them do I'm sure some of them are great and in fact there's both specialized and generalized but I also think that you can imagine that some of them are so focused and so specialized on just one domain of life that they're really missing out and I think that one of the beautiful things about life is that you have an opportunity to experience a lot of it I think people really limit themselves when they say that well I'm only interested in in this little hobby here this little topic here why why aren't you interested in all of it why are you making why are you making judgments and tastes why not be someone who tastes and samples all of life when you do that what you'll realize is you actually come into a true deep understanding of who you are and what your true likes and dislikes are a lot of people they will specialize in one thing and they will be so focused on it that they never really went out there and sampled and when they didn't go out and sample their decision to specialize is only based on really circumstance they just happen to fall into something they didn't really choose it and they don't know maybe there's something better out there this is one of the ways that you go about finding your life purpose your true life purpose is that you go out and you take the time you do the work and you actually go out there and you look or around you travel you read books you read blogs you enjoy different types of food you you enjoy different types of art and culture and film and you're open-minded to it all and music so you listen to club music you maybe listen to rap music you also listen to classical music you don't have to focus on one of them go and try all of it you'll naturally have some inclinations towards one or two of those but why not expand expand yourself experience life I mean ultimately what are you here for what is your purpose is it to just work is it to just earn a paycheck is it to just buy a house and retire comfortably no I think for self actualized human being the purpose of life realizing that it's short is to experience it I mean is that a purpose that you have that's personally a purpose that I have is I want to experience life I want to both experience it sensually with my senses I also want to experience all of life with my intellect with my mind that's why I love reading on diverse topics I love studying diverse topics I like talking about diverse topics I like philosophy and history and science because I want to experience all those with my mind it's interesting there's differences in similarities and you find patterns like it's it's cool and then also essentially I want to experience it I want to live in different countries I want to try different foods I want to live in different cities different types of cities big cities little cities compare and like have those experiences there's something that happens to you that's very difficult to quantify and articulate it's something intangible when you have a lot of life experience when you've lived in different places when you know different languages when you've interacted with a diverse group of people this is one of the reasons why in colleges they will force you to take breadth requirements and why they will try to have a diverse population of students on the campus it's this idea of building up a certain worldliness within you they're trying to instill that within you that's why they make you take art classes if you're a science major and if you're art major that make you take some science classes it opens you up but that shouldn't stop at college and in fact I think College College is just like the tip tip of the iceberg after you graduate you should be out there experiencing life taking it in don't be so specialized that you become an insect a drone on the one level on one hand that that is a way to become successful but on the other hand you also notice this is something that self Godin talks about is that really to be successful in this new century you need to develop some skills and some thinking abilities that are beyond just simple mechanical functions mechanical functions are very quickly being made obsolete with technology technology is getting very very good at replacing human beings in doing mundane things and this even goes for specializing in something that right now maybe humans cannot or robots or machines cannot do but over time they will be able to do it the really difficult thing may be the impossible thing at least in the foreseeable future for computers or robots to do is to get at this very intangible high level level of thinking judgment and wisdom that is something that we're not even close to replicating and so that is where you want to be at because that's where you can generate a lot of value and when you're there it feels so good it feels so rich your life feels rich and you have all these opportunities to share with people and you know so much more about yourself and you know how to make yourself fulfilled and just that process of expanding yourself becoming open-minded becoming a Renaissance man that's powerful there's a power there's an ineffable power there that's difficult to articulate and I think that we take for granted so take Robert Island's advice and don't specialize because specialization is for insects all right this is Leah onry signing this was a profound quote section where we talk about the most profound ideas the most profound quotes in human history I bring those to you I analyze them and we talk about how it can apply to your life in a practical way all right post me your comments like this share this and of course sign up to my newsletter at actualized org where we are all about the psychology of success we want you to be able to master your psychology really understand your psychology so that you can create an extraordinary kind of life for yourself you