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.
None of his statemetns suggest that anyone should be a true generalist, but that people should not focus on a single field to the exclusion of even a basic understanding of the rest of human knowledge.
There comes a point where the breadth of human knowledge is so vast that's it's not possible to have even a basic understanding of it all; I believe we passed that point long ago. All men are necessarily ignorant about a great many things.
For all critics of this article, there's much more to Cal Newport's ideas than presented here. Stuff I often disagreed with, for sure. But this post is basically an 'About' page and should be treated as such (and as such, makes a poor candidate for HN)
I think "do fewer things" is dangerous advice, especially given the relative inexperience of college students. I would say do more things, explore more areas. You shouldn't obsess about getting good grades, but rather you should obsess about learning as much as you can. The things that are truly interesting will stick, but you risk never discovering them if you try and do as little as possible.
I think you are not completely disagreeing with the most important part of the message: knowing why you are doing something. When young, you can be trying lots of news things, e.g. drugs, casual sex, going to Tibet, etc. etc. either as a clueless youth (which is how it's done mostly) or doing them for consciously in order to learn from your experiences.
The options become less less as you get older, obviously. In fact I think the best description of the change in career outlook as you get older is a switch from breadth-first search of new experiences to depth-first search.
At first I thought this post and the whole blog were an awesome idea. It seems to describe really well what I was never able to put into words. How exactly did I get through school and my BSc/MSc with awesome grades while always having a feeling that everybody else is working so much harder and still incredibly intelligent?
I thought this blog had the answer. But then I relaized that this will not work in every major / profession. My girlfriend is doing lots of things and somehow suffers under the heavy workload. But I can't give her this kind of advice because (at least here in Germany) it does not apply to someone who studies philosophy and politics and wants to get into the best positions as development worker. Why? because nobody cares about your marks. You basically get a degree for the sake of the degree itself and for living a students life while doing as much extracurricular activities as possible. Internships, important roles in local divisions of NGOs and so on are almost everything that counts for getting the job you want.
Personally, I still think "Do fewer things; do them better; know why you're doing them" worked incredibly well for me and may help many other students, I is probably not for everyone and certainly not for every subject.
So the, for her the fewer things is the coursework itself, timeboxing each assignment as to know how to do enough for the target grade which likely is not an a
It's just the lean methodology applied to studying. But the point is interesting, because while learning you do get a lot of informations that you have to assess in order to focus on the essential.
-Robert A. Heinlein