Specialist & Multi Skills Generalist | 專才與通才

Thousands of years ago, when human were still hunting for survival, most of the people need to learn everything about hunting, otherwise you may die, so everyone is an expert hunter. In the agricultural era, jobs get more diversified to meet different kind of demands, like the carpenters, blacksmiths, merchants, soldiers, scholars,etc. As what we learnt from school, diversification and practice makes perfect enhance productivity well, by adopting specialist in performing one single task, especially in the industrial age.

從前，當人類仍然依靠打獵維生，所有人都基本上是打獵專家，不然就要等餓死了。當後來農業社會發展，為了迎合多元需要，我們開始有了不同類型的專才如木匠、鐵匠、戰士、學者等等等等。到後來的發展大家也知道在不同領域的專才發展愈來愈普遍，就像我們中學時期念書的概念，如單一操作由專人專責，生產力就會大大提升，因此在工業時代，很多工人整天做的只是不斷重複單一操作。

Later on, when human knowledge expands, scientific knowledge has been divided into different categories like physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, etc, and even sub-divide into multiple branches. Same trend has been taken place in medicine, as you know when you go to the hospital now, there is numerous specialist medical departments.

後來當知識不斷増加和膨脹，我們把不同的科學知識分成了物理、化學、生物、心理學等不同的分類，就如把這個世界的運作同時進行分類。情況就如今天我們去醫院求診，你會發現到花多眼亂的專科部門。

In the recent years, people began to consider the pros and cons of specialization, as a problem always cannot be solved by one specialist but a group instead. For instance, it works well by asking a small work group to tackle a problem instead of by a specialist.

近年來，大眾開始反思專材的權衡利弊，因為大部分的問題都是多元的，需涉及不少學科的協調才得以解決。小組解決問題是現時最常用的方法。

So what is the 'correct' way ? 你會選擇成為一個專才，還是一個通才?

I reckon knowledge is indivisible and all around us. Just simply like working, if we want to have a better understanding and handling our tasks well, we have to keep on learning, try to understand what the people around us are doing and also why they do so, meanwhile we must drill into areas where our interest and strength is. One thing I learnt from my manager who I appreciated a lot is keep your curiosity! Do not just focusing on do and do and do, you may soon be replaced by a robot ! Here is AI world now! Instead, find out the phenomenon and reason behind, I am sure you will gain much more.

我認為知識是無處不在亦不易分割，就如工作一樣，如果我們想處理得好工作，大家就必須不斷學習不斷求進，知識是無窮無盡，發展亦然，如果選擇故步自封，自會被社會淘汰。反之，了解身邊的人，同時在自己的特長深入研究。我在我其中一個我非常欣賞的上司學到，我必須保持"好奇心"，當你完成一項工作而不知其然時，你很快會被機械人取代，反之尋根究底去理解你在做的事情，得益往往是自己。

So what is the 'correct' way ? 你會選擇成為一個專才，還是一個通才?

I still do not have a exact answer on this, probably it depends. But this do remind me to keep on strength myself as a specialist, together get to know more about other specialist and things happen around me, to be a multi-skilled specialist.