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In grad school, I learned the value of having multiple things going on at once. I always had two studies going on, so if one stalled, the other might still be progressing. But sometimes this wasn’t enough diversity—some days, I was having larger-scale doubts about my worth as a scientist, and having a second experiment to think about didn’t help.
During this period, I had picked up two new hobbies: weightlifting and aerial silks. Since I was relatively new to both of them, progress was quick. Each week I could lift a bit more or do a new acrobatic trick.
As far as diverse hobbies go, I could have chosen better—the downside of two very physical hobbies is that an injury can put both on hold. This happened in my final year of grad school, when I hurt my back and had to take a depressing break from both.
Still, the combination of my physical hobbies and multiple experiments meant there was usually something progressing. I might plateau on my weightlifting, but if one of my experiments was going well, my motivation wouldn’t flag—I still had a reason to get up in the morning and follow my usual routine. At some point the plateau would end and I would make progress in the gym, and maybe my deadlift would become the new exciting thing I was making progress on.
This variety in my life enriched my experiences and made my motivation steadier. I benefited from a sort of psychological portfolio effect—diversifying the things I was working towards reduced the risk that comes from putting all your motivational eggs in one basket.
Chessboxing and the Thief of Joy
Daniel Greco wrote a great essay, “How to Cheat the Thief of Joy“, arguing that thinking about your own diversity can blunt feelings of inadequacy caused by comparison. If you measure yourself on a single dimension, it’s easy to find someone who is better than you. There is always going to be a better scientist, philosopher, weightlifter, or musician.
But most of us have something else going for us. If you compare across your mix of pursuits, the picture changes. The person who makes more money than you might not be as good at playing guitar.
Greco makes an analogy to chessboxing—a sport that involves alternating between boxing rounds and blitz chess until one contestant gets a knockout or checkmate. If we imagine a comparison that combines two—or more—of our idiosyncratic passions, we’re much more likely to be the best at the sport.
This is a sort of portfolio effect for our self-esteem. The more diverse our interests and accomplishments, the harder it is to find someone who is better at literally everything we care about. It’s also easier to accept others as individuals rather than competitors if you see them as competing in a game that’s a combination of their idiosyncratic interests rather than competing against you in a single category.
This diversification doesn’t just help with comparing ourselves with others, though. Maybe I’m just full of self-doubt, but I’ve often wondered whether certain accomplishments actually amount to anything.
When I did my PhD, I was very aware I was studying in a particular field (neuroeconomics) with a specific theoretical paradigm, using a specific animal (monkeys), using specific methods (single-unit electrophysiology). While it’s too high a standard to expect any given study to be without flaws, I was more concerned about meta-flaws—were the assumptions going into my research well-founded? Or could it turn out that everything I was doing amounted to nothing? Each of the theoretical paradigms, the animal being used, and the methodologies, had their critics. If any of their criticisms turned out correct, it was possible that everything I spent years on amounted to nothing.
In my experience, every accomplishment comes with some of these doubts. Sure, I just finished a big important project at work… but there’s every possibility that in a few months, the business will change enough that it won’t matter. Or the impact isn’t actually measured, so it’s hard to say whether it actually mattered at all.
These doubts are a lot easier to deal with if you’ve spread out your accomplishments across multiple areas. If one study I published ends up being bunk, at least I have other studies. If I start to doubt that my work in one field actually made any difference, at least I have accomplishments in other areas that hopefully do.
Having a diverse portfolio of accomplishments makes any self-doubt feel a lot more like special pleading. So many uncorrelated things would have to be bullshit for my life to have amounted to nothing that the possibility just feels unlikely. Self-doubt can be combatted with diversification.
Variety is the Spice of Life
Above I’ve argued diversification of your interests and accomplishments helps reduce the psychological risk of losing motivation or self-esteem. But diversity also adds richness to life that has its own value.
With any experience that excites or fulfills us, if it becomes routine, we get used to it. We adapt to our new situation, what was once exciting becomes expected, and we are back to where we started. This is commonly referred to as the hedonic treadmill—the idea that we can just get used to whatever brings us joy, so it’s hard to actually increase our happiness.
Research has shown that in general, having variety among our day-to-day activities also improves happiness. But some psychologists have suggested that the way to combat hedonic adaptation is to make sure there’s novelty in your life. By keeping it new, we don’t adapt, allowing us to continue appreciating our experiences and sustain elevated happiness.
Hedonic treadmill aside, psychologists have suggested that variety in life is a psychological need (that’s even more important for those who are high on the “openness to experience” personality trait).
Happiness, along with meaning, are often seen as the two factors that are important for what most people consider a life well lived. But recently it’s been suggested that having a “psychologically rich” life is an important third factor. Living a more varied life, with interesting stories and unusual experiences, is an essential part of what makes life good, so much so that at least some people would trade off some meaning or happiness in their lives to increase the variety of experience.
Of course, none of this is to say the best life is one where you maximize instability, and flit from one interest to the next without ever achieving any level of mastery of achievement. Positive and meaningful experiences are more important to most people than pure diversity. Achieving a certain level of depth, mastery, and accomplishment are considered important by most models of happiness. But there is balance in all things.
A Portfolio of Lenses
I don’t think of trying new things as just a way to keep things fresh, but a way of being able to see more of the world. There are so many different domains that some people spend their entire lives diving deep into, becoming experts, and exploring. By trying lots of new things, we can visit these different worlds and gain perspectives we might otherwise lack. We only have one life, it seems a shame to leave so much of the world unexplored, and the only way to explore it is to gain some expertise in a variety of areas.
Recently I’ve been learning music—something I once assumed I didn’t have any aptitude for. The truth is, I just didn’t have much exposure to the creation of music. I had cut myself off from a domain that others find so meaningful, they devote their lives to it. By learning some music basics, I’m gaining a new lens, able to see (or rather, hear) a new piece of the world, and at least get a hint of what others find so fascinating.
I’ve written before about how the way we see the world can change with the expertise we have or the way we conceptualize it. Having a wider set of lenses with which to see the world is another way of diversifying, opening up more of the world to experience or at least appreciate.
Before grad school, I didn’t have much of an interest in the physical domain. I was never too into sports. Getting into weightlifting and aerial silks changed that—suddenly feats of strength were a lot more interesting because I had the context to appreciate them more. Strongman competitions, olympic lifting, gymnastics, and circus arts all become more interesting to me because I was able to use the lens of my understanding of the physical strength and skill involved.
A former girlfriend once said to me she hoped her future kids weren’t into sports—she, like me, lacked interest or experience with team sports. I disagreed—I might not be into the typical team sports that culture is rife with, but if someone close to me was, that would be an opportunity to learn about that part of the world that interests so many.
Beginner Mode
Learning new things means often being in “beginner mode”. It’s uncomfortable. You’re repeatedly experiencing your own incompetence.
What makes this worse is that when you’re new, you’ll mostly run into people who are very experienced. At the gym, you’ll mostly run into people who spend more time in the gym with you—those that do something a lot and do it for a long time are overrepresented. The more casual people or the ones who don’t stick with it aren’t around enough for you to encounter them.
I remember when I was younger thinking it must be embarrassing to be taught something by someone younger than you. You’ve had more time being alive, how can someone younger be “ahead” of you?! But of course, we all spend our time doing different things. The older person likely has plenty of things they could teach their teacher—but they also have the humility to learn something new.
I think that humility is easier when you’ve lived a diverse life to begin with, so your sense of self doesn’t hang on a single domain. If you’ve experienced a lot and accomplished diverse things, it’s easier not to get discouraged by the comparison along a single dimension, and therefore easier to be a beginner.
So living a varied life might give you the resilience to add even more diversity to your life. You can draw strength and stability from these experiences, as they help you enrich your life with even more new experiences. And your version of chessboxing becomes ever more idiosyncratic.
Anyone fancy a game of sciencefiction-neuroscienceblogging-aerialsilks?
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Loved this! Good job Tommy!
i agree. diversify! and not only does it help with adaptation in challenging times but it also opens you up to a bigger world of knowledge. i had a boss once who said “you can have it all but you can’t have it all at the same time” and that resonated too. the richness of experience unfolds over time if you are open to it.