Swinging Between Being a Generalist or a Specialist

Lately, I’ve felt like I’m on a swing—going from one extreme to the other. One day I feel confident about being a generalist, the next I wonder if I should’ve just stuck to one thing and gone deep.

I can explain the benefits of being a generalist. I’ve seen different industries, done different roles, picked up a range of skills. But a few months back, during a casual chat about careers, someone asked me:
“Don’t you think you should have stayed longer in one company?”
“At least stuck to one industry?”

Those questions hit harder than expected. They stayed in my head, poking at me. Not because I didn’t have answers, but because they made me doubt if those answers were real or just ways to make peace with my choices.

I don’t want to justify things to myself. That feels like covering up. I want to know honestly—why did I take the generalist path?
Maybe it comes down to what I really think success is.

If success means climbing one clear ladder in a specific industry, then yes, maybe I messed up. But my definition of success was never that. I’ve always been more drawn to the unknown, to figuring things out on the go, to solving things that don’t have one clear answer.

Being a generalist gave me that. I stayed curious. I could walk into different rooms and bring ideas others hadn’t seen. But still, the question remains:
Have I spread myself too thin? Or is this diversity the very thing that makes me different?

I’ve realised it’s not about picking one lane—it’s about knowing how to tell the story. How to position this mix of experiences in a way that others can see its value too. That’s when I started thinking about consulting.

Consulting needs versatility. It rewards people who’ve seen different worlds, worked with different kinds of problems. Maybe I didn’t plan it that way, but looking back, this generalist path kind of fits.

I can take ideas from one industry and apply them to another. I’ve done strategy and execution both. I’ve seen how messy real work can be. And maybe that’s useful.

So I’m exploring consulting—quietly, on the side. It feels aligned. It feels like something where my random mix of experience might actually count.

But then, another voice:
Should I even be writing this? Isn’t this too open? Too unsure?
Will someone think I don’t have my act together?

But that’s the truth—I don’t always have my act together. And maybe writing this is part of figuring it out.
A specialist might think twice before being this open. But I’m not a specialist. I think out loud. I learn by doing. I write to make sense of things.

So yeah, I’m sharing this. Not because I have the answers—but because I’m still swinging, and I know I’m not the only one.