this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
684 points (97.0% liked)
memes
17216 readers
3124 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
And honestly, this is just as encouraging. Some of this is stuff you cant exactly list on a CV for a job application. A lot of people have interesting experiences, hobbies and special interests under their belt and still feel bad about themselves because their unique skills/knowledge isn't exactly marketable or something your mum would brag about to other parents. And the stuff that actually does fall under the category of classic success (being in academia, working on the dictionary) isn't at all what he's famous for. If it's cool when Tolkien has a life like this, your unique experiences and skills are cool, too.
You can list all of those things in a resume, besides maybe the traveling.
There's a book I read, Range by David Epstein, that really reinforces the idea that lots of experiences that don't cleanly fit into a CV are still very valuable. The core idea is that late specialization makes for better specialists, because very few fields stand alone. Having contextual background makes it so that you can better mix and match cross disciplinary skills, with your own experience and knowledge of yourself, to be better at whatever it is you're doing.
The examples used in the book are Roger Federer (played many sports and didn't specialize in tennis until much later than the typical pro), Django Reinhardt (never formally schooled in music but an amazing jazz guitarist even after he lost 3 fingers), Van Gogh (many failed careers before finding success as a painter), and a bunch of others.
But the core principle is the same: the real world is messy and doesn't boil down to simple factors, so having breadth is important when the system you come up in changes underneath your feet. The book also uses the counterexamples of Tiger Woods and the Polgar sisters who were dominant chess players, to describe how the fields of golf and chess give immediate, true, and objective feedback in a way that most of the world doesn't.