I love being a generalist, but I hate it too. Sometimes it’s absolute torture. One of the most frustrating parts is getting interested something new and then falling behind on everything else. I’ve fallen behind on a lot of things lately. Some are necessary things that I really shouldn’t be falling behind on - such as bills, expense reports, timesheets, and replying to important emails. Others are for-fun things like reading, blogging, writing, photography, and working on old projects. Because there’s always something shiny to obsess about just around the corner, what happens is that I think of myself as almost a writer, almost a designer, or almost a programmer. I just can’t seem to hang around one thing long enough to truly master it at the level I’d like.
The almost-a-film-person inside of me has taken over these past few days (partly because we’ve been sifting through dozens and dozens of directors’ reels at work) and I finally signed up for Netflix. I’m trying to catch up on my list of movies-to-watch, and the first two to arrive in my mailbox are City of God and Human Nature. If you’ve got an account, add me as a friend and tell me what I’ve missed out on.
On a side note, I’m completely fascinated with Netflix’s crowdsourced contest to improve their recommendation algorithm. It’s part of a bigger recent obsession with heuristics and decision-making processes. Did I mention I was almost a psych major in college?
Welcome to the club. Now the real question is… is this useful to… someone? Or is “generalist” just a euphemism for easily distracted. Your idea about the netflix contest came back to me recently when trying to add to my movies-to-watch list. Whether or not it’s doable or not, I’d really like an “If you liked this, you’d probably like this” that gave reliable results. Websites, books and the entire globe is great, but where is Google on the really important stuff?
a little while back, the new york times had a really cool article about the netflix contest. i’ll try to find it and send it your way.
and yes…no time for anything, just enough time for nothing. it gets frustrating rather quickly.