Ace of All Trades, Master of Confusion

That's me. I still consider myself a young professional, even though I've already entered my thirties. Soon, I'll celebrate a decade of being a working adult, spending most of my career in telecommunications and the past three years in the mobility industry.

I still have many years ahead of me. During that time, I've already had to reinvent myself several times. I started as a Wireless Specialist, working on exciting proof-of-concept projects, writing technical articles, and creating and presenting polished presentations — often with Easter eggs and subtle subliminal messages poking fun at our competitors. Later, I joined a mobility company in my hometown, where I now work on automated testing for a diagnostic and communication computer.

So where exactly is the reinvention?

It mostly lies in changing the dynamics of my work — moving from a customer-facing role to being an engineer who barely needs to think about customers at all. It gives you a valuable perspective on how engineering can be approached from different angles.

Has my career been coherent in terms of the topics I've worked on? Yes and no. Should I be worried about my current position? Not really.

From my perspective, it's only beneficial to experience different roles and viewpoints. That doesn't mean I plan to try every profession under the sun. I also can't say that one role is inherently better than another. Every specialization has its own advantages and disadvantages. I believe changing roles and specializations throughout our careers will only accelerate because of disruptive technologies such as large language models and other forms of AI.

I think people should experiment — at least with a portion of their time, both professionally and personally. Build a strong backbone of activities and specializations that provide the highest return on investment, and dedicate the remaining 20 percent of your time to exploration.

Yes, I'm bringing up the Pareto Principle — the famous 80/20 rule. And yes, I'm slowly getting tired of hearing it from every possible angle. Still, it's a simple concept to carry around and a good enough approximation of how many things in life seem to work.

If you think about it, this process starts in school. You and I studied different subjects to discover what we naturally enjoyed and what we excelled at. For some, it was history or philosophy. For others, mathematics, physics, biology, or chemistry — which was mostly my case. We explore different fields before choosing a specialization. Of course, reality isn't always that straightforward.

We do the same thing throughout life. We search for life partners, hobbies, sports, recipes, and countless other interests. But we can't keep exploring indefinitely.

At some point, the challenge stops being discovering new possibilities and starts becoming filtering them. In today's world, that may be one of the most valuable skills we can develop.

Personally, I think most people should have their lives reasonably together by the age of thirty so they can make the most of their potential. Reality, however, often has different plans.

Instead, many of us are becoming satellites with unstable orbits, constantly receiving conflicting signals from every direction. We're overwhelmed by information.

It's almost as if we've lost the ability to filter what truly matters to us.

I spend a surprising amount of time thinking about thinking — metacognition. Honestly, sometimes even during work meetings. I've come to the conclusion that our brains and nervous systems are still remarkably primitive. We live in bodies that haven't fundamentally changed for tens of thousands of years, yet we're trying to build a future of unimaginable complexity.

The irony is that we often measure richness by the number of material possessions we own instead of the quality of the information we consume. We forget that the information we repeatedly absorb ultimately shapes who we become.

"But Peter," you might ask, "what can we actually do in a world overloaded with information?"

I don't have a perfect answer. But I would suggest aiming for the golden middle path most of the time.

Extremes rarely serve the human body — or the human mind — well. Extreme cold versus extreme heat. A cognitively unstimulating environment versus one that constantly overwhelms you. An overly soft world versus an excessively brutal one.

What I'm trying to convey is that the optimal path is usually somewhere in the middle.

Be knowledgeable, but know how to relax. Be athletic enough to push yourself, but wise enough to recover. Develop both your logical and your spiritual side. Be open-minded, but not naive.

That's why I try to grow in multiple directions at once.

You see, I'm not a "classic" engineer. I can create marketing materials, design digital artwork and illustrations, write articles that have nothing to do with technology, and write code. I understand networks from the physical layer all the way up to the application layer.

Perhaps it pays to become laser-focused and specialize deeply in a single domain (I won't get into T-shaped or V-shaped professionals here). But for many — perhaps even most — people, it's often more beneficial to build competence across multiple domains while optimizing the skills they use most frequently.

For example, if I write unit tests every day, then yes, I want to become exceptionally good at writing unit tests. But that doesn't necessarily require becoming one of the world's leading specialists.

My motivation is to move in many directions while prioritizing the ones that provide the greatest leverage and return on investment. That's the simplest strategy I know.

Sprinkle in some time for reflection, and voilà — you have a reasonably simple recipe for a life that isn't wasted.

Maybe being an ace of all trades does come with moments of confusion. But I'd rather spend my life exploring, connecting ideas, and occasionally feeling lost than never venturing beyond a single path. Confusion is often just the price of curiosity.

And if that's the cost, I'm happy to pay it.