How to Think Like a Generalist: A Skill You Can Learn

You become a generalist by practice. Move between fields in small steps, collect the words and ideas of each field as you go, and train yourself to ask the one question that shrinks a problem down to something simple. That’s the whole method. It costs a pencil and a notebook. The hard part is doing it every day instead of reading about it.

Short answer: generalism is practice, not talent alone

People hear “generalist” and picture a genius. Franklin with his kite. Jefferson at his drafting table. They assume you either have it or you don’t.

Some people do have it. In Common Sense 2.0 I put the natural rate at “maybe one generalist per million population.” If that were the only source, we’d be out of luck, and I argue that’s roughly where the country sits today.

But the same paragraph of the book says this:

It is a gift, yet it can also be learned.

I argue the Founders didn’t wait for one-in-a-million births to line up. They trained generalists, and they trained a lot of them. You can train yourself the same way, and you don’t need a degree or a fancy vocabulary to start. Appendix 4 of my book says vocabulary, education and literacy all help, “but none matters much at the outset. They are by products of this technology, not prerequisites for it.”

Read that twice if you’ve ever felt under-schooled. The skill builds the vocabulary. Not the other way around.

Habit 1: ask the right question first

Most bad decisions start with a bad question. “How do we fix the schools?” is too big to answer, so committees answer it with money and paper. “Can the kids in this district read the local paper?” is a question you can check by Friday.

Here’s how I put it in Appendix 4: “The edge, the genius, lies in asking the right question. Even dumb AI can add 2 and 2, if you can reduce a problem to that level of complexity.”

That second sentence is the practical one. Your job isn’t to be smarter than the problem. It’s to shrink the problem until the arithmetic is easy. When you’re stuck, write the question down and ask whether a sharp kid could answer it. If not, cut it in half and ask again.

Habit 2: build a listening vocabulary wider than your speaking one

A generalist has to understand the farmer, the lawyer, the machinist and the accountant in their own words, then explain his answer to all four in plain English. Those are two different vocabularies, and they grow in opposite directions.

In Appendix 4 I set the targets this way: “a generalist builds up toward a 20-million-word listening vocabulary, the better to understand anyone’s problem, and down toward a 20,000-word speaking vocabulary, so he can explain his alternatives and solutions to anyone who cares to listen.” Those are my figures, not a lab’s. The direction matters more than the numbers. Listen wide. Speak narrow.

The tool for this is old-fashioned. The book’s advice: “do start a personal dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia of new and confusing words.” A pocket notebook does it. Every time a specialist uses a word you don’t know, write it down with one line in your own words. Within a few weeks you’ll notice how many fields are using the same idea under different names.

Habit 3: move from one idea to the next in single steps

Specialists jump to conclusions inside their field because they know the ground. A generalist crosses unfamiliar ground, so he moves one step at a time and checks his footing.

The training game for this is the Tree of Knowledge, and it gets its own post. The short version: pick two unrelated nouns and get from one to the other by changing one thing at a time. My worked example in the book goes from a rocking chair to an old motor car in four steps. Each step changes a single aspect, so you can see exactly where the idea bent.

Do this a few times and you’ll catch yourself doing it at work. A problem that looked like a wall turns out to be a staircase.

Habit 4: borrow tools across fields

The generalist’s best tools come from somebody else’s shop. In the book I suggest starting with “a list of reversible verbs, like add-subtract or specialize-generalize.” Those verbs work on any subject. You can specialize a chair into a dentist’s chair or generalize it into “a place to sit.” You can do the same to a tax, a recipe or a road.

The book’s third game shows the trick in action. Two players pick nouns blind, and one draw is a manila folder and the Nautilus submarine. One player treats both as government property and borrows the purchasing office’s life cycle to predict the sub’s story: “specification; Request for Quotation; Purchase Order; inspection; useful life; disposal.” A paperwork tool, pointed at a warship. That’s the move.

So when you meet a problem, ask which other trade has already solved something shaped like it.

A 10-minute daily drill

Here’s the drill I’d hand anyone who asks. It needs a pencil, a notebook and any printed page.

1. Open a dictionary, a magazine or a newspaper and put your finger down without looking. Take the nearest interesting noun. Do it again on another page.
2. Get from the first noun to the second in as few single steps as you can, using your reversible verbs. Write each step on its own line.
3. Write down one thing you’d predict about the second noun from what you know of the first.
4. Add any word you had to look up to your personal dictionary.
5. Finish with one question about a real problem at work or in your town, cut down until a sharp kid could answer it.

Ten minutes. No app, no subscription. Do it every day for a few weeks, then tell me it didn’t change how you read the news.

The full training is Appendix 4 of Common Sense 2.0: the three games, the vocabulary targets and the reasons behind them. It’s in the $3.99 EPUB, about 40 minutes of reading, yours to keep. Start the drill tonight, then read the appendix and see how far it takes you.

Questions

How do you become a generalist?

Practice moving between fields in small steps, collect the words and ideas of each field in a notebook, and train yourself to ask the question that shrinks a problem down to something simple.

Is a generalist born or made?

Both. I estimate the natural gift at roughly one per million people, and I argue the Founders trained the rest. My line for it is: it is a gift, yet it can also be learned.

What is the difference between a generalist and a polymath?

People use polymath for someone who excels in many fields. I care less about the trophies and more about the habit: seeing how one field’s tools solve another field’s problem.

How long does it take to think like a generalist?

I can’t promise a date. I can say the drill in this post takes ten minutes and needs only paper. It gets easier every day you do it.