A factotum is defined as an employee that does all kinds of work.
This is contrary to what we’ve been trained to believe. We’re supposed to go to college and focus on becoming a specialist in something, aren’t we?
Without getting into a much larger rant about the education system, I wanted to make a simple observation.
We are now being asked to be factotums. Since the world around us moves so quickly, specializing in any given topic has become a terrible strategy.
We all like to learn new things, and it’s those that learn the widest breadth of topics that can successfully lead and speak to all of the moving parts of a functioning machine.
If you’re a factotum, you should aspire to drive the machine.
If you don’t like learning and prefer to be a specialist, expect to always be a cog in that machine.