You comment on AI is interesting… if a human can be trained to do a job, AI can eventually be trained too. Also, in some areas (e.g. math) you probably can’t out-specialize AI.
On the other side, there is already very high value to the “Octopus” capable of leading and organizing a lot of different “Sharks.” Even in my own writing, I see how AI research assistants, editors, and image designers take the place of specialists, but extend my capabilities as a generalist.
“How AI can enable Octopuses” would be something interesting to explore.
Thanks Rick, AI capabilities continue to surprise me, jobs that previously seemed safe from AI are turning out to not be so safe. I've read some other posts from AI people indicating that a generalist type person could coordinate multiple AIs doing specialist things, almost like a "super employee". I can definitely see this happening, although I'm not convinced only generalists could do this. Maybe generalists would have better out-of-the-box ideas about how to do it in more interesting combinations though.
Fun fact: did you know some Octopuses "orchestrate" and direct the behavior of lesser skilled fish in order to coordinate a food hunting expedition? They literally instruct them and correct their behavior by punching them until they do their role.
Thanks Daria, still figuring out how to best configure the community but will definitely keep you posted. Is there any kind of activity you'd enjoy in a community for Octopus people?
A specific activity? Hmmm... maybe something like a puzzle. Everyone writes down their 5-8 favorite skills or things to do & then we exchange them & get another persons skills, look at them & come up with a creative career path that we see in it. Ideally without knowing more about the person, so we are as unbiased as possible. Often others see patterns & connections clearer than we do. Would be awesome to get a set of eyes on each of our core skills & loved activities :)
I like this idea, I like the “blinded” aspect of it, so you’re purely just looking at what they wrote without knowing their past or present line of work. This is the kind of thing I’d like in a community, where we can help each other in ways that are unique to us as octopuses.
All the traditional career path advice out there is designed for specialists eg pick one thing, so I like the idea of creating new career paradigms for Octopus people. Thanks!
I've actually been wondering when your next writing will come out. So glad to see you here, again! On the other hand, I completely understand your reason for being more offline, taking a step back from the online noise. I feel the same way.
This post found me at the perfect time. Lately, I've been struggling with storms of thoughts on how much I should push myself, how to manage my energy levels and how to do my non-day job works & aspirations, also considering the massive energy drain I've been feeling lately.
When I see all those online noises on YouTube, X, and elsewhere from the "sharks", I cannot stop the initial feeling: "is there something wrong with me? Am I not pushing enough?"
I have no clear answers yet. Some recent journaling and "ChatGPT-coaching" helped me to realize that there's nothing wrong with me, I just need to act according to my creative rhythm and nature as a human being.
I certainly feel that I belong to the Octopus group; I am a wanderer, an experimental human, a curious and creative self but I don't feel having (or giving myself) enough space to strive in that - even if I am trying to craft videos for my YouTube channel slowly.
Having such a community with like-minded people would be so exciting, I would be so interested in that!
Thanks Máté, nice to hear from you, and yes I was away for a while, glad you're still reading my newsletters :)
I feel like social media can be fun and definitely has some good attributes, but it can also amplify certain kinds of thinking that are not helpful. The "success gurus", aka Sharks, are a good example of this. They often have good things to say but they rarely acknowledge that they have a complex combination of personality traits that allow them to "succeed" without trying that hard, while other people who don't have those same traits will struggle. But they talk to the strugglers as if they just need to fix a few things and they can succeed too.
I think it's better to lean into what makes you unique, and find your way in the world based on who you are, not someone else's definition of success. It is interesting that the Sharks often hold up artificial measures of success, such as money, as an indicator that one has a successful life. But in reality there are many ways to live successfully, that may show little/no public indicators.
In a future post I want to talk about the struggles of being an Octopus. Unlike the Sharks I do not pretend being an Octopus is an easy path, "just do these 1-2-3 things and you can be a successful Octopus too!" There are some very real hardships about being an Octopus, and I think we should be honest about those.
In a community we might be able to share both wins and struggles, I think it would be interesting to learn from others how they handle things like time management when you want to do 8 things at a time.
thanks Paul, it’s been a while for me too, haven’t posted in a few months but that’s ok, sometimes you have to pay attention to other things in life. Hope whatever you’re trying to survive eases up soon for you.
I've been non-ironically living full-time as a writer, so I have that going for me at least. It is not always easy but it's better than what I used to do, 100%.
Happy to have stumbled upon this today. I'm new(ish) to Substack and am considering becoming more active here, partially for engaging dialogues like this, partially to promote my coaching offerings.
I resonate with the Octopus construct and have been using something similar (I've named it a Sputnik) along with a list of personal values + Cal Newport's multi-scale planning tools. While it sounds Shark-like, it's actually opened up a ton more creative time for me. I'm looking forward to being a part of a community if you decide to build it.
Thanks Cornelia, welcome to Substack, glad you found me, and glad you like the Octopus construct. I enjoyed Cal Newport's book "So Good They Can't Ignore You", but I have not heard of his planning tools, will check it out.
I'm formulating how to build a community and will let people know via my newsletter here, so let's stay in touch!
Thank you, David. Your reply is what's good about the internet. Kind interactions. Feeling seen. Which brings me to a question about building a community: Is Substack comments the community we can feel good about? Is this already our community?
In a past career during the infancy of the social media era I was tasked with building an online community. It did not need to monetize itself because it was sponsored by a national nonprofit with the mission of changing the culture that benefits their constituents (family farmers and agrarian arts). It was my job to connect like-minded people on a proprietary platform (then Ning, now the equivalent of Mighty Networks). It was successful, but also a LOT of daily work. I soon started calling it "feeding the beast". Drudgery at the end. I ask this not to discourage you, but to gently ask what the motivation is to build something separate from Substack. After all, I found you here! Which brings me back to being intentional with my time and not falling prey to the algorithmic internet (another Cal Newport term - I might be a groupie!)
Thanks for the feedback, it's a good question. I have interacted quite a bit in the Substack comments, and am thankful for the thoughtful things people post in reply to my newsletters, but it doesn't quite feel like a community to me, it's more like brief 1 on 1 interactions.
I may have a pleasant exchange in the comments, then I may not hear from that person for a long time, and in many cases never. If you subscribe to a lot of publications here, you end up with the firehose conundrum which seems to plague all social media, where you become overwhelmed trying to stay on top of things. So it is easy to dismiss newsletters that you just don't have time to read, which also means you leave no comments, thus resulting in a very loose, periodic, temporal personal connection.
I want a community to establish something deeper with people who resonate with the octopus way of life, and want to try to live it too. In other words I'm looking for my "tribe" of like minded people.
I hear you on the drudgery if you're a community manager, I've found that communities that have a clear "leader" tend to rely too much on that one person to keep things alive. I imagine that is a tiring job for the leader. I want to set things up so that it's NOT a "Dave is the head octopus guru" situation, where Dave sells a course + coaching, and everyone looks to Dave for the answers. Instead I want it to be more like "we're a bunch of octopuses trying to navigate life together" and figure out how to make the Octopus way work in both life and career. So it's more like a peer support group.
Probably easier said than done, but I'm in a community that functions this way, called SmallBets, the guy who started it participates, but most of the interactions are between members.
I'm not really crazy about any of the community platforms out there, I've been in Mighty groups and found the interactions lacking, I partly blame the user interface, I don't think we've quite figured that out yet. Open to any further thoughts on how I might best approach this.
Currently in an online “life coaching certification” training and it’s incredibly geared towards shark mentality. (It definitely feels like the highest value by the leaders. I can almost feel intellectually bullied, and definitely outnumbered.) I pulled up your article - which I’ve already read - just to “be in the room” with someone like me. Thank you. And thanks for your writing, Dave. 👌🏼❤️❤️❤️
Thanks for reading, glad you liked this. It’s kind of sad that even in a life affirmation, discovery, and assistance endeavor like life coaching, the shark mentality has crept in.
But the good thing is, maybe after getting certified, you can be a more expansive and empathetic coach to people who do not fit the shark mold, and illuminate other possible paths for your clients.
Amen. Yes thank you. It’s mostly just to bolster me up with a “certification,” since I’m coming to working with people later in life and will not go into debt by going back for a Masters. I want to use deep interest and listening, energy and intuition, and breathwork. As well as whatever skills I can glean from this.
Anyway, yes thank you for being you and sharing your writing with us.
You’re very welcome and I get the credentialing need to establish some credibility. I wish you the best, sounds like you already have some good tools in mind to help people!
You said this to someone else: “They often have good things to say but they rarely acknowledge that they have a complex combination of personality traits that allow them to "succeed" without trying that hard, while other people who don't have those same traits will struggle. But they talk to the strugglers as if they just need to fix a few things and they can succeed too.” Yes. Exactly!
Given how many publications there are on Substack now, I take this as a supreme compliment, thanks for staying subscribed, I hope to keep delivering good content!
Hey Dave! There are 2 kinds of people: the kind who divide people up into 2 types, and those that don't. (Old joke :)
As to your comment
"I’m increasingly feeling like spending so much time online/on social media is empty calories. I literally have nothing to show for it."
I tend to view publishing on-line (in addition to the intrinsic fun of writing and sharing) as simply marketing/awareness generation. If it doesn't lead people to a desirable product or service with a price tag, it's just skywriting. I think most people discover the economic ROI is low and pull back. We only have so much time/energy.
Your Octopus paradigm is solid. I call it a balanced work/life portfolio. Hard to make a buck off an idea though. I've tried and failed often (sometimes better).
Thanks Baird, I like that 2 kinds of people joke :)
Agreed on the finding the writing balance thing, I feel like my balance is one post every 2 months! Not good for growth/feeding the algorithm, but more important to manage my time/energy life balance, which at this stage of life is more valuable to me. Plus I like having time for more meaningful interactions over fewer posts.
As far as making a buck off the octopus, my original intent was to make a buck off my tentacles, not off the octopus idea itself, but I'm rethinking that after talking to some people. Not sure what it would look like yet though.
Storms, what kind of determined Octopus wouldn't want to find their tribe? A community sounds great. Are you thinking free or paid, and do you have any particular ideas?
Hi Jūlija, thanks for your interest. I have not thought about the free/paid thing much. I never set out to make money from the Octopus Way concept, I set out to make money from my tentacles so this community thing is a new idea for me. Off the top of my head, I might offer some free things (such as a webinar) and some paid things (such as a 1 on 1 call).
But here are some things I *kind of* know that are starting to calcify:
-I'd want it to be accessible/affordable to people all over the world.
-I have a perhaps irrational/unfair pet peeve over people who sell courses or create communities about something they attempted and failed to do, you know the "I couldn't do it so I'll teach about it" crowd. I'm still figuring out the Octopus life too, so if I made a community, it would not be "Buy my Octopus course and join my community and let Dave teach you how to do this too!"
-If I did a community it would be more like "join with fellow octopus people to figure out how to do this together". So it would almost be more like a cheerleading-support-idea sharing-tribe.
-It also has to be fun, and since Octopus people have an incredibly diverse array of interests, I'd want to make room for that and maybe have show-and-tell days where a member could share about one of their tentacles, and others could ask questions. Maybe that would be a video interview, maybe in print, maybe both.
-I also want it to be less digital and more human. Obviously we'll use digital tools, but I would want it to feel less like social media and more like a family reunion.
That's about as far as I've gotten, open to your thoughts on this, as I know you're on the same journey!
We're often inactive, as we're actively working on our projects, but we do check on each other every once in a while and exchange our experiences and advice.
Thanks Lucy, glad to meet you, I subscribed to your pub, I started my career in design too, and evolved from there to marketing etc, I can relate to parts of your journey.
I assume the "fairly large Generalist community" is Generalist World? If so I really like what Lindsey and Milly have put together, although I heard Lindsey left recently. How do you like the community there? I've thought about joining but the price is a bit steep, I have gone to some of their one-off webinars though, and they've been great.
I see Octopuses as a subset of Generalists, I'm sort of advocating for a way of living as much as a personality/work style, and lean towards entrepreneurial generalism rather than helping generalists find jobs. So if I made a community it would have a different kind of flavor than a typical community. Still shaping it up, is there anything you wish existed for people like us that doesn't exist today?
Yes! GW...and yes, it has evolved quite a bit and gone through some changes over the years...
I think having any space for octopuses to feel welcome and to share our struggles would be awesome - especially as I think we're hitting a new phase in the workforce where our skills are going to be far more valuable than ever before. How can we navigate this change and make sure we are at the forefront of it?
You comment on AI is interesting… if a human can be trained to do a job, AI can eventually be trained too. Also, in some areas (e.g. math) you probably can’t out-specialize AI.
On the other side, there is already very high value to the “Octopus” capable of leading and organizing a lot of different “Sharks.” Even in my own writing, I see how AI research assistants, editors, and image designers take the place of specialists, but extend my capabilities as a generalist.
“How AI can enable Octopuses” would be something interesting to explore.
Thanks Rick, AI capabilities continue to surprise me, jobs that previously seemed safe from AI are turning out to not be so safe. I've read some other posts from AI people indicating that a generalist type person could coordinate multiple AIs doing specialist things, almost like a "super employee". I can definitely see this happening, although I'm not convinced only generalists could do this. Maybe generalists would have better out-of-the-box ideas about how to do it in more interesting combinations though.
Fun fact: did you know some Octopuses "orchestrate" and direct the behavior of lesser skilled fish in order to coordinate a food hunting expedition? They literally instruct them and correct their behavior by punching them until they do their role.
You learn something new every day!
Great post, happy to have read it & it resonated so well! I Would love an Octopus community for sure :)
Thanks Daria, still figuring out how to best configure the community but will definitely keep you posted. Is there any kind of activity you'd enjoy in a community for Octopus people?
A specific activity? Hmmm... maybe something like a puzzle. Everyone writes down their 5-8 favorite skills or things to do & then we exchange them & get another persons skills, look at them & come up with a creative career path that we see in it. Ideally without knowing more about the person, so we are as unbiased as possible. Often others see patterns & connections clearer than we do. Would be awesome to get a set of eyes on each of our core skills & loved activities :)
I like this idea, I like the “blinded” aspect of it, so you’re purely just looking at what they wrote without knowing their past or present line of work. This is the kind of thing I’d like in a community, where we can help each other in ways that are unique to us as octopuses.
All the traditional career path advice out there is designed for specialists eg pick one thing, so I like the idea of creating new career paradigms for Octopus people. Thanks!
Yaayyy, happy you like it :)
I've actually been wondering when your next writing will come out. So glad to see you here, again! On the other hand, I completely understand your reason for being more offline, taking a step back from the online noise. I feel the same way.
This post found me at the perfect time. Lately, I've been struggling with storms of thoughts on how much I should push myself, how to manage my energy levels and how to do my non-day job works & aspirations, also considering the massive energy drain I've been feeling lately.
When I see all those online noises on YouTube, X, and elsewhere from the "sharks", I cannot stop the initial feeling: "is there something wrong with me? Am I not pushing enough?"
I have no clear answers yet. Some recent journaling and "ChatGPT-coaching" helped me to realize that there's nothing wrong with me, I just need to act according to my creative rhythm and nature as a human being.
I certainly feel that I belong to the Octopus group; I am a wanderer, an experimental human, a curious and creative self but I don't feel having (or giving myself) enough space to strive in that - even if I am trying to craft videos for my YouTube channel slowly.
Having such a community with like-minded people would be so exciting, I would be so interested in that!
Thanks Máté, nice to hear from you, and yes I was away for a while, glad you're still reading my newsletters :)
I feel like social media can be fun and definitely has some good attributes, but it can also amplify certain kinds of thinking that are not helpful. The "success gurus", aka Sharks, are a good example of this. They often have good things to say but they rarely acknowledge that they have a complex combination of personality traits that allow them to "succeed" without trying that hard, while other people who don't have those same traits will struggle. But they talk to the strugglers as if they just need to fix a few things and they can succeed too.
I think it's better to lean into what makes you unique, and find your way in the world based on who you are, not someone else's definition of success. It is interesting that the Sharks often hold up artificial measures of success, such as money, as an indicator that one has a successful life. But in reality there are many ways to live successfully, that may show little/no public indicators.
In a future post I want to talk about the struggles of being an Octopus. Unlike the Sharks I do not pretend being an Octopus is an easy path, "just do these 1-2-3 things and you can be a successful Octopus too!" There are some very real hardships about being an Octopus, and I think we should be honest about those.
In a community we might be able to share both wins and struggles, I think it would be interesting to learn from others how they handle things like time management when you want to do 8 things at a time.
Will keep you posted about the community!
I have been so busy trying to survive that I haven't written as much here as I'd like to. Nice to see this post!
thanks Paul, it’s been a while for me too, haven’t posted in a few months but that’s ok, sometimes you have to pay attention to other things in life. Hope whatever you’re trying to survive eases up soon for you.
I've been non-ironically living full-time as a writer, so I have that going for me at least. It is not always easy but it's better than what I used to do, 100%.
Interesting read, rather refreshing to find a mindset I can begin to relate to.
Happy to have stumbled upon this today. I'm new(ish) to Substack and am considering becoming more active here, partially for engaging dialogues like this, partially to promote my coaching offerings.
I resonate with the Octopus construct and have been using something similar (I've named it a Sputnik) along with a list of personal values + Cal Newport's multi-scale planning tools. While it sounds Shark-like, it's actually opened up a ton more creative time for me. I'm looking forward to being a part of a community if you decide to build it.
Thanks Cornelia, welcome to Substack, glad you found me, and glad you like the Octopus construct. I enjoyed Cal Newport's book "So Good They Can't Ignore You", but I have not heard of his planning tools, will check it out.
I'm formulating how to build a community and will let people know via my newsletter here, so let's stay in touch!
Thank you, David. Your reply is what's good about the internet. Kind interactions. Feeling seen. Which brings me to a question about building a community: Is Substack comments the community we can feel good about? Is this already our community?
In a past career during the infancy of the social media era I was tasked with building an online community. It did not need to monetize itself because it was sponsored by a national nonprofit with the mission of changing the culture that benefits their constituents (family farmers and agrarian arts). It was my job to connect like-minded people on a proprietary platform (then Ning, now the equivalent of Mighty Networks). It was successful, but also a LOT of daily work. I soon started calling it "feeding the beast". Drudgery at the end. I ask this not to discourage you, but to gently ask what the motivation is to build something separate from Substack. After all, I found you here! Which brings me back to being intentional with my time and not falling prey to the algorithmic internet (another Cal Newport term - I might be a groupie!)
Hi Cornelia,
Thanks for the feedback, it's a good question. I have interacted quite a bit in the Substack comments, and am thankful for the thoughtful things people post in reply to my newsletters, but it doesn't quite feel like a community to me, it's more like brief 1 on 1 interactions.
I may have a pleasant exchange in the comments, then I may not hear from that person for a long time, and in many cases never. If you subscribe to a lot of publications here, you end up with the firehose conundrum which seems to plague all social media, where you become overwhelmed trying to stay on top of things. So it is easy to dismiss newsletters that you just don't have time to read, which also means you leave no comments, thus resulting in a very loose, periodic, temporal personal connection.
I want a community to establish something deeper with people who resonate with the octopus way of life, and want to try to live it too. In other words I'm looking for my "tribe" of like minded people.
I hear you on the drudgery if you're a community manager, I've found that communities that have a clear "leader" tend to rely too much on that one person to keep things alive. I imagine that is a tiring job for the leader. I want to set things up so that it's NOT a "Dave is the head octopus guru" situation, where Dave sells a course + coaching, and everyone looks to Dave for the answers. Instead I want it to be more like "we're a bunch of octopuses trying to navigate life together" and figure out how to make the Octopus way work in both life and career. So it's more like a peer support group.
Probably easier said than done, but I'm in a community that functions this way, called SmallBets, the guy who started it participates, but most of the interactions are between members.
I'm not really crazy about any of the community platforms out there, I've been in Mighty groups and found the interactions lacking, I partly blame the user interface, I don't think we've quite figured that out yet. Open to any further thoughts on how I might best approach this.
Currently in an online “life coaching certification” training and it’s incredibly geared towards shark mentality. (It definitely feels like the highest value by the leaders. I can almost feel intellectually bullied, and definitely outnumbered.) I pulled up your article - which I’ve already read - just to “be in the room” with someone like me. Thank you. And thanks for your writing, Dave. 👌🏼❤️❤️❤️
Hi Bethany,
Thanks for reading, glad you liked this. It’s kind of sad that even in a life affirmation, discovery, and assistance endeavor like life coaching, the shark mentality has crept in.
But the good thing is, maybe after getting certified, you can be a more expansive and empathetic coach to people who do not fit the shark mold, and illuminate other possible paths for your clients.
Amen. Yes thank you. It’s mostly just to bolster me up with a “certification,” since I’m coming to working with people later in life and will not go into debt by going back for a Masters. I want to use deep interest and listening, energy and intuition, and breathwork. As well as whatever skills I can glean from this.
Anyway, yes thank you for being you and sharing your writing with us.
You’re very welcome and I get the credentialing need to establish some credibility. I wish you the best, sounds like you already have some good tools in mind to help people!
You said this to someone else: “They often have good things to say but they rarely acknowledge that they have a complex combination of personality traits that allow them to "succeed" without trying that hard, while other people who don't have those same traits will struggle. But they talk to the strugglers as if they just need to fix a few things and they can succeed too.” Yes. Exactly!
Lately, I've been unsubscribing from many substach newsletters. I'm keeping this one.
Given how many publications there are on Substack now, I take this as a supreme compliment, thanks for staying subscribed, I hope to keep delivering good content!
I'd be interested in an octopus community too :)
cool thanks Joseph, will keep you posted!
Hey Dave! There are 2 kinds of people: the kind who divide people up into 2 types, and those that don't. (Old joke :)
As to your comment
"I’m increasingly feeling like spending so much time online/on social media is empty calories. I literally have nothing to show for it."
I tend to view publishing on-line (in addition to the intrinsic fun of writing and sharing) as simply marketing/awareness generation. If it doesn't lead people to a desirable product or service with a price tag, it's just skywriting. I think most people discover the economic ROI is low and pull back. We only have so much time/energy.
Your Octopus paradigm is solid. I call it a balanced work/life portfolio. Hard to make a buck off an idea though. I've tried and failed often (sometimes better).
Cheers! ✌️
Thanks Baird, I like that 2 kinds of people joke :)
Agreed on the finding the writing balance thing, I feel like my balance is one post every 2 months! Not good for growth/feeding the algorithm, but more important to manage my time/energy life balance, which at this stage of life is more valuable to me. Plus I like having time for more meaningful interactions over fewer posts.
As far as making a buck off the octopus, my original intent was to make a buck off my tentacles, not off the octopus idea itself, but I'm rethinking that after talking to some people. Not sure what it would look like yet though.
Storms, what kind of determined Octopus wouldn't want to find their tribe? A community sounds great. Are you thinking free or paid, and do you have any particular ideas?
Hi Jūlija, thanks for your interest. I have not thought about the free/paid thing much. I never set out to make money from the Octopus Way concept, I set out to make money from my tentacles so this community thing is a new idea for me. Off the top of my head, I might offer some free things (such as a webinar) and some paid things (such as a 1 on 1 call).
But here are some things I *kind of* know that are starting to calcify:
-I'd want it to be accessible/affordable to people all over the world.
-I have a perhaps irrational/unfair pet peeve over people who sell courses or create communities about something they attempted and failed to do, you know the "I couldn't do it so I'll teach about it" crowd. I'm still figuring out the Octopus life too, so if I made a community, it would not be "Buy my Octopus course and join my community and let Dave teach you how to do this too!"
-If I did a community it would be more like "join with fellow octopus people to figure out how to do this together". So it would almost be more like a cheerleading-support-idea sharing-tribe.
-It also has to be fun, and since Octopus people have an incredibly diverse array of interests, I'd want to make room for that and maybe have show-and-tell days where a member could share about one of their tentacles, and others could ask questions. Maybe that would be a video interview, maybe in print, maybe both.
-I also want it to be less digital and more human. Obviously we'll use digital tools, but I would want it to feel less like social media and more like a family reunion.
That's about as far as I've gotten, open to your thoughts on this, as I know you're on the same journey!
I love these ideas and definitely agree with your vision. I'd love to hear more about this in the future!
By the way, in case you're on Discord, I'm in a small server for aspiring polymaths and could share the link if you're interested.
I love the idea of a whole lot of octopi exchanging ideas on how to octopus successfully 🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙
Thanks Paula, this idea is growing on me!
Thanks, will definitely keep you posted, and would love to join the Discord!
https://discord.gg/PbYw4Pcb
Polymath Potential
We're often inactive, as we're actively working on our projects, but we do check on each other every once in a while and exchange our experiences and advice.
got it, I'm in!
Octopus for the win!
I'm part of a fairly large Generalist community already, but there is always room for more - we are too quiet and in the shadows!!
Thanks Lucy, glad to meet you, I subscribed to your pub, I started my career in design too, and evolved from there to marketing etc, I can relate to parts of your journey.
I assume the "fairly large Generalist community" is Generalist World? If so I really like what Lindsey and Milly have put together, although I heard Lindsey left recently. How do you like the community there? I've thought about joining but the price is a bit steep, I have gone to some of their one-off webinars though, and they've been great.
I see Octopuses as a subset of Generalists, I'm sort of advocating for a way of living as much as a personality/work style, and lean towards entrepreneurial generalism rather than helping generalists find jobs. So if I made a community it would have a different kind of flavor than a typical community. Still shaping it up, is there anything you wish existed for people like us that doesn't exist today?
Yes! GW...and yes, it has evolved quite a bit and gone through some changes over the years...
I think having any space for octopuses to feel welcome and to share our struggles would be awesome - especially as I think we're hitting a new phase in the workforce where our skills are going to be far more valuable than ever before. How can we navigate this change and make sure we are at the forefront of it?
Would be happy to set up some time to chat!!!
Hi Lucy,
Would love to chat, here's my calendar if you want to book a slot: https://cal.com/davekang
Done! Looking forward to it!
Community sounds good to me!
Thanks Cate, will keep you posted, let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like to see in an Octopus community!
I would love to be a part of the octopus community.
Cool! Is there anything in particular that would be valuable to you if you met up with fellow octopuses?