1. Focus more on the day to day life of what working in that career is like. Focus less on what the topic is itself, intellectually. If you’re a curious person, there are probably at least half a dozen subjects you find interesting enough to do as a career. So it is less immediately important that you pick one over another. If you had an obvious sole choice, you wouldn’t be asking this question.

The under-discussed thing is that if you don’t like the daily work routine or environment of a particular profession, that intellectual content almost doesn’t matter. Especially after years and years of being in the industry. For example, if you don’t like working in an office at a desk all day, you probably will struggle with being a software engineer, no matter how interesting your find it. You might be better off looking into civil engineering, or construction management, or another semi-adjacent field that isn’t done entirely from a desk in an office.

2. This may be more of a personality thing, but try to pick a field that involves a fairly narrow set of skills which you are able to master over time. Even though many/most white collar technology jobs pay better and are at the cutting edge of the economy, I feel like (and I imagine many others do too) there is a distinct lack of “progress” in terms of your professional self development. It’s very easy to constantly learn new things, but not have them add up to any coherent whole. This is probably because technologies change so often and the business requirements vary wildly. This sort of scenario is very unlike say, a chef, in which it’s more easy to track your progress and feel like you’ve achieved something over the course of a decade.

> Find what interests you and focus on it!

There are different ways to interpret this. I think most people think of programming related technologies.

But remember, software runs almost everything. Which means that, with your programming skills, you can work in almost any industry that uses software.

So besides thinking about what about programming interests you, think about what in the world interests you. I've been fortunate to work in: shipbuilding, airliner manufacturing, , telecommunications, finance, web development and medical device manufacturing.

Besides the programming technologies, the subject matter is usually at least as interesting, if not more.

It was really cool walking under 747s to get to my office.

I'm not advocating learning only one thing and spending your life on that-- on the contrary, I'm saying if there's a subject you're not interested in (eg.: chemistry, accounting, actuarial science, invertebrate biology, whatever), it's probably because you don't know enough about it.

The people who do know about topic X, do see its applications. There's almost always more to gain from learning a different thing than we tend to believe at the onset.

It’s true though that “follow your passion” as a blanket statement is not a good advice (for all the reason in the article). But so is the blanket statement of “find a niche craft where you can excel”.

First, you never know whether you will excel at a skill or not before spending a really long time doing it.

Second, craft is not for everyone. If you’re a people’s person, HR, management or politics is likely a better orientation. You could say that you have developed “managerial skills”, but then the question becomes how to chose one’s skill?

I believe a better advice is “follow what you already know you’re good at”. And “if you’re not good at anything yet, just keep trying things you may enjoy and see if you’re good at them”

Nothing is as devastating as having a job that you're not enthusiastic about and, vice versa, it seems that people are usually more motivated to achieve success when they're doing something they like.

You've graduated in CS, but perhaps you should look beyond the computer related stuff?

I am slowly realizing the fact that specializing in an area is the true answer, there is only so much information my brain can handle and I would prefer being an expert in an area rather than just being good in general things.

I might just list everything that interests me and allocate some hours per day or week to play around with it, that's actually a good idea! Thanks.

Beyond that, there is the issue of whether you would prefer to work on something interesting, all else being equal. Of course, for that to be an issue, one first must be interested in something.

Second, work towards the goal of "be an and" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30855775)

Don't limit yourself to just one thing, but do limit yourself to learning only 1 or 2 things at a time - and learn them as deeply (or shallowly) as you like (since no one is forcing you to do this (ie it's all voluntary on your part)). For a suggestion on how you might approach this, see https://antipaucity.com/2012/12/10/finding-your-niche/#.Yk2s...

It's as important to find out what you don't like as what you do like

In complex technical niche fields jumping from gig to gig is not that easy, though.

I was perhaps overtly bleak in the above for the benefit of clarity (it's ok not to love your job, but it's also ok to concentrate on things you love and the thing does not need to be your job).

Diversified interests sounds like the opposite of boring to me.

> If one doesn't aim for excellence, is it a bad thing?

It probably indicates that your actual interests lie in something other than what you are currently doing. One suggestion I found useful was to make two columns on a sheet of paper and keep it at your desk. The first column is "I loved this!" and the other is "I hated this". When you find yourself enjoying a task (or vice-versa), write it down. The theory is that our interests are surprisingly specific. The guy saying this (Erwin McManus if I recall correctly) said that he is really excited by helping people find their passions. Not pursue them, find them. It helped me identify some of the areas I enjoy, so I've pursued jobs in those areas.

> I am jack of all trades but master of none.

Reframe this: I know a little bit about everything, so no matter what your problem is, I can solve it. I might not solve it the most efficiently, but if you need a problem solved, I'll solve it.

Some environments need raw production. Some need carefully crafted algorithms. Some need prototypes held together with duct tape. Some need solidly connected piping. Breadth favors some environments over others. Breadth is helpful for freelance contracting, for instance, since clients have a problem and want the assurance that you have already solved a similar problem before, so the more difference environments you have worked with, the more likely you will look like someone who can solve their problem.

I wouldn't worry too hard, though. (Nor would I recommend jumping in to freelancing too early.) If you're early in your career, focus on figuring out what it is that you enjoy, and leverage your skills to slowly move in that direction. And figure out what your boundaries are (hrs/week, pay, on-call, etc.), so that you know what things to avoid. There's plenty of software jobs besides FAANG out there.

Go in the directions that interest you. The education and business systems are not designed around people like you. Get over it. Find challenging areas that suck you in and keep looking for the things that suck you and you will have a great time and it will all be worth it.

Stop comparing yourself to the specialists. Specialization leads to smaller and smaller gains. Generalization leads to larger and larger gains. But the generalist must work harder than a specialist to realize those gains (they are bigger gains right?)

Pursue the things that excite. it doesn't have to matter why they excite you. If you do that, you will do fine. Don't beat yourself up about it. You are not going to become a specialist... EVER. So go do the thing people cannot see because it requires you to approach it from so many different angles.

Make your own path. Believe in yourself. Be bold. Move fast. Have fun and play. Specialists do not get to play in so many areas. YOu do, so enjoy yourself.

Last year I had a bit of a crisis. I believed that I needed to become more focused on one particular area to facilitate long term professional success. I think I got this advice directly or indirectly from different people at different times.

But I couldn't. I looked at specific areas to specialize in isolation. All of them are interesting, but I could feel almost physical pain from just thinking to narrow down my focus on any of those.

Then I gave up, and what a relief that was. I realized that I'm not wired this way. I see the connections between the things. That's what draws my attention and endlessly motivates me. Tackle a new problem, refine my skill a bit here, bolster my knowledge a bit over there.

Quoting Heinlein: Specialization is for insects.

This resonates with me.

Now I'm a programmer (full-stack web), teacher, consultant. Recently also started learning technical writing and working towards building an animal sanctuary.

I see more and more connections between those things, which is satisfying and rewarding, often in unpredictable ways.