A minimalist generalist is someone who manages their time to learn many skills. This allows such a person to know and stay up to date with various skills and industries.
The start of the Minimalist Generalist Era.
The Minimalist Generalist Era has had quite the silent start. It contains people who need to pickup multiple skills to survive in their industry.
A small example of the Minimalist Generalist approach
Let's say you want to start an event company - you host events, people pay to attend these events and you make profit after deducting costs from revenue.
Sounds pretty simple, but to compete with other players you will need to:
- List your events; sounds obvious but then you need to
- Be good at writing copy for the event as well as
- Graphic design; a good banner helps. Simply listing an event won't help, now you will need to learn a bit of
- Digital marketing to reach the right audiences and maybe
- SEO if you are trying to leverage blogs and landing pages to get more signups. This might be good for one time sales but for recurring communities you now need a
- Community so people have a higher brand recall
- And a newsletter to ensure stay up to date with your events.
- Perhaps a WhatsApp group too if your audience uses the platform daily and oh how can I forget
- Social media for all posts, collaborations, user generated, content, etc for which you need
- Video editing and graphic design skills again.
Yaowie! That's a lot.
If you have employees who can do it for you, amazing. But if you are someone who is low on money then you need to do all of these at the start.
So is every entrepreneur a minimalist generalist?
Every hard working entrepreneur is a generalist for sure, but they are definitely missing the minimalist part of it.
Achieving a minimalist approach to this generalist train of thought can be the hardest.
Adding minimalism to a generalist mindset
As a generalist, you know multiple skills but you cannot focus on what's new in the industry or stay up to date with updates.
In SEO, the experts will always be on their toes whenever Google decides to tweak their algorithm on how your content is found.
So how do we add minimalism to a generalist mindset?
Effective elimination for a generalist
Test multiple things and eliminate what does not work for you within a skill. If a minimalist graphic works better for conversions 10/10 times then maybe it makes sense not to have a fancy edit with all the bells and whistles.
If Luma increases your event signups while decreasing the time taken for filling in user details then it makes sense to list your event there instead of 10 different event ticketing platforms.
Eliminating things that don't perform well is important.
Staying notified about recent changes
Use your calendar to block out 30 minutes to read about recent updates in software or industries you are a part of. This will help you keep in touch and not lose sight on what's to come.
Reading on updates from key figures for a software or industry can also help you not lose momentum in the skills you are learning.
Avoid skill decay as a generalist
Losing the capacity to execute a skill you learned a few months ago hurts. If I sit down to write some CSS after a break away from it then I am ashamed to look at W3Schools for answers.
Practice your skills well and regularly, even if it's the most mundane and repetitive task.
Avoid a decay in skills - you can forget what you learn and let me remind you that you are learning a lot as a generalist.
How to become a Minimalist Generalist
To become a minimalist generalist you must focus on learning new skills, adding structure to how you learn repetitive action and reflect on what skills are not easy to monetise.
Write down the skills you are learning and wish to learn.
Take the time to write down the skills you are learning, the skills you wish to learn and the skills you have accomplished to an extent - even if it's at the beginner level.
Put them in a spreadsheet and evaluate what works best for you and which skills are you most motivated towards.
Dedicating time is key to becoming a minimalist generalist.
If you are learning multiple skills, there are three states where you will find yourself:
- The skill is simple to learn and once done you can't forget it.
- The skill is of some difficulty but once learnt you need to practice it timely so you don't forget it.
- The skill requirements changes depending on the industry and therefore you must stay updated always.
Reflections on what skills help you best
Make a note on what skills are helping you fulfil your goals; these may help you pay the rent for now so it makes sense to stick to them and dedicate some more time to learning and improving.
On the other hand, skills that are not currently useful but might be handy in the future can have smaller sessions each week.
For example, working in AR is what brings me the most revenue right now so it makes sense to stay updated with latest news from the industry and learning related skills.
On the other hand, maybe I can dedicated fewer minutes to Framer in a week.
The advantages of becoming a minimalist generalist
The ability to learn multiple skills with the least amount of time and effort will help you grasp concepts, make connections and adapt quickly.
There are some places where a minimalist generalist absolutely thrives and prospers.
Leading a team as a minimalist generalist
A manager that knows accounting, social media marketing and copywriting can easily look over their team's progress and make changes to processes.
A minimalist generalist can easily lead a team and bring the best out of them since they can understand the time and effort required to successfully bring a project or idea to life.
Going blow for blow with AI
I believe that the AI doom and gloom stories are exaggerated but as a minimalist generalist it's the least of your worries since you will always have a skill that can't be replaced.
Feeding your own curiosity
This is the most obvious part but curious people make really good minimalist generalists. The more keen you are on learning how something works the better you understand the inner workings of a system, team or workflow.
As you pick up more skills in a small time, your curiosity will lead you towards things you are more interested in and that provides you with future clarity.
The one person agency route
If you have multiple skills and can manage your time well, you can easily provide value to multiple businesses by being a one person agency.
A one person agency provides multiple services to a business and brings results that full staffed teams cannot compete with.
Brett from Designjoy is one such example; it has its own backdrops of course but a minimalist generalist is likely to find financial freedom without working under someone (note: you can be employed by choice too and that's totally fine!)
If you would love to incorporate minimalism in your generalist approach towards business feel free to get in touch.
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