The Curse of Competence.
You're probably pretty competent. You can do things. You're prepared to try new stuff.
And when you try new stuff, you don't suck that much and you seem to make progress more quickly than most people.
This is another Curse Of Competence. Your options for life-direction are less constrained by your abilities, and more by your choices. This sounds like a blessing. Indeed it's better than the alternative. But it's a unique category of problem, one which occurs while people tell you how fortunate you are to deal with it.
Barry Schwartz in the Paradox Of Choice talks about the process of buying jeans 60 years ago. You went to the jeans store and there was one type, one colour, one cut. You found your waist size, paid and walked out. Now, you may have wanted a slightly different style of jeans, or length, or colour, but you had no choice other than what was given to you. So your total utility from the jeans may not be maximised but your satisfaction with the decision is pretty high, knowing you got the best you could given the circumstances.
Compare this to today. You go to a jean store and look around. Do you want skinny or bootcut? Straight legged? Cropped? Ripped? Blue? Grey? Acid wash? The options are endless. Hurray! You can finally select exactly the pair of jeans you're looking for. But this also means that any suboptimal decision is entirely your fault.
If you were unhappy with your jeans in 1960 - it's the fault of the crappy jeans store. If you're unhappy with your jeans in 2024 - it's the fault of your research. Previously, your experience was largely out of your hands and limited by the world, today, it's only limited by your choices. This is how a constraint of options makes the decision making process easier.
The Curse Of Competence plays into this too. If you only are good at one category of things, you sure might be unhappy that you can't do something else, and that indeed is a rubbish situation. But the constraint helps to narrow your choices down. On the other hand if you're good at lots of things, there are many paths open to you which is liberating but can also cause you to be scared, confused and frozen in place.
In one world your life options are constrained by opportunity, in another world they are constrained by discernment.
Having lots of competencies you could follow in your life is exciting, but it's also terrifying and paralysing too. Plus you have the added challenge of feeling guilty for your seeming ungratefulness even though the world is at your feet.
Chris Williamson | @chriswillx