One way I have described myself is as a "professional amateur".  I am both deeply proud and deeply ashamed of that.  Let me explain. For basically my whole career, I've been learning new fields and professions from the outside-in.  While I have an undergrad degree in Urban Studies, which ostensibly prepared me for interdisciplinary work regarding cities (and you could argue that's exactly how my career has turned out), in practice I've spent the past 15 years learning other stuff and basically pretending to be a professional at it.  Design, programming, running a startup, tech policy, law, activism, "internet architecture", market structure, venture finance.  In every case I've ended up diving in despite not really knowing anything, and figured it out as I went along. (An aside: it's pretty hard to do this without the internet.  Curious about history?  Start reading some Wikipedia articles.  Want to learn to code?  Head over to Codecademy, then make best friends with StackOverflow.  Confused by a legal term?  Google it.  Need to install shingles on your roof?  There are YouTubes for that.  So, it's easier than ever to be kind of good at something.  Which is so fun.) I also enjoy lots of different things, and feel like I'm better than average at most of them, (though I'm sure that's a fallacy): baseball, singing, carpentry, ice skating, writing, cooking, water skiing, juggling, tennis, playing drums, playing piano, rock climbing, etc.  I am not the best at any of them, but I take a lot of pleasure from all of them. The good way of looking at this is that I can confidently call myself a curious person.  And generally think of myself as capable,  Curious and capable.  I like that.  I can get behind that. The bad way of looking at this is that it lacks focus.  And probably dedication & determination.  Feeling stuck on that music thing?  Fuck it, go build a shed. And, it's in tension with the idea of a "Half, not half-assed" approach.  Do less, but do it really well.   Then move on to the next thing.  I admire that approach, and really do believe it's central to building a successful product. But it's hard to pull off -- as Eddie Wharton