Summary: The love for learning new skills and the passion for building knowledge can turn you into a jack of all trades. It's not for everyone, but I love it.
Hi, my name is Antti.
I'm somewhat of a "theory man". I like to find, learn and figure out how to do something. I like to dig deep to reveal the very best way to do it. I don't always find it, but I will always look for it.
I don't stop there. I want to know more. I turn into doing to test my theories, and occasionally I even find something that really works.
I want to continuously build my skills and knowledge of wide variety of things. And I like to help others with what I know. I'm a jack of all trades.
Love
If I don't know something (I want to know), I go and find out. If I don't know how to do something (I'm interested in), I want to learn it.
Now that I realized this, I understand a little bit better who I really am and what's been the driving force for much of what I've done. There are millions of little things, little decisions, micro-moments that have taken me where I am now.
But I believe this one thing has made the biggest impact.
The love to learn stuff.
"Problem"
No-one can know everything. Over time I have accepted this and channeled my passion for knowledge to things I'm most interested in.
I don't know how to fix a car. I'm a lousy cook too. I didn't go into learning how engines work or how to make two weird sounding organic materials taste good together. I was interested in different kind of technology, computers.
Computers, software. Games. The Web. Programming, design, usability, HTML, PHP. WordPress, blogging. Productivity. SEO. Making money. Internet marketing, online business.
Knowledge
I love to know stuff. I love to learn stuff. I love knowledge.
I know a lot of stuff. Not because I'd be any smarter than anyone else, but because I like it so much.
I like to know stuff so much, that it interferes with doing one thing, because I like to learn that other thing too.
Focus
Learning a lot and building knowledge and acquiring skills is the key to finding what matters the most.
By learning and trying a lot of things I know what I don't need to know and what I don't need to do.
I learn to focus. By knowing a lot, I learn what matters and what doesn't. I learn to do less. And doing less of the stuff that don't matter has a tendency to increase productivity.
Learning
I don't go into learning absolutely everything. It starts with interest, curiosity. I'm interested in something, but I need to learn something to do it. I go learn it.
I learned English a bit before they started to teach that in school. I learned very fast with the help of the teacher. Language genius? Hardly.
I just needed to figure out what the mission debriefings on Airborne Ranger said so I'd know what to do in the game.
I didn't go into learning any other languages. I didn't need to.
Computers "talked" English (in addition to BASIC and Assembly).
TV shows I liked (MacGyver!) were in English.
Passion
I have a passion for knowing stuff. As a result, I am very, very good at learning stuff. Learning and acquiring knowledge is easy to me.
It is easy because I work to learn.
I work hard.
The passion for learning took me to figure out how computers work when I could barely read, it took me to learn English so I could play computer games, I could do division and multiplication 3 years before they taught that in school.
"Mathematically gifted" - they said.
Reading math books and hundreds of hours of math just because I liked it so much, says I.
Skills
When I set my eyes and mind into something, I go all at it. I read, listen, learn and build knowledge. I start experimenting.
I work intensely hard. The end result is always amazing. It's amazing because I worked on it. (If something is not where, it can rarely be amazing.)
Maybe I "failed". Still amazing. I turned my idea into reality. And I learned something along the way.
Then I go and study. Experiment some more and learn as I go.
The good stuff
I learned this thing called blogging. I got into the heart of WordPress.
But there's more to this blogging than the tech side of things and PHP. Why do people come to my blog? Where do they come from?
Content marketing? Search engine optimization.
I got interested in Internet marketing. There's money to be made here? What's this copy writing people are talking about? Persuasion marketing, sounds like a hoax - I better learn what it's really about...
I want (to know) it all
I don't learn just the one thing, but what is related too.
This shows here on this blog too. I experiment, try and look for more things.
I started with WordPress, PHP. I got interested in blogging. I got interested in Internet marketing. I got interested in how all this works as a business. I got deeper into marketing. I got interested in copywriting.
There's an endless amount of things to learn. And I love it.
I might be better of concentrating on just one thing, but that's not me.
I like to know stuff. I like to look far and wide.
Jack of All Trades
Jack of all trades, master of none,
though ofttimes better than master of one.
I once asked, do we all need to specialize, is there room for generalists?
Tim Ferriss thinks so (and gives top 5 reasons to be a jack of all trades too).
Last year I wasn't sure.
Now I am.
And I agree with Mr.Ferriss.
You?
Focus on the one thing you are really good at?
Or build your body and mind into a Swiss Army knife of skills and knowledge?
Antti Kokkonen
Too complex to categorize
