work is so boring is that we keep having

to do more or less the same thing every

day

we have to be specialists whereas we

would deepen our hearts surely be so

much more fulfilled if we could be

wide-ranging endlessly curious

generalists you can understand the

origins of restlessness when you look at

childhood as children we will allow to

do so much in a single Saturday morning

we might put on an extra jumper and

imagine being an arctic explorer then

have brief stints as an architect making

a Lego house a rock star making up an

anthem about corn flakes and an inventor

working out how to speed up coloring in

by gluing for felt-tip pens together

we'd put in a few minutes as a member of

an emergency rescue team then we try out

being a pilot brilliantly landing a

cargo plane on the rug in the corridor

we'd perform a life-saving operation on

a knitted rabbit and finally we find

employment as a sous chef helping make a

ham and cheese sandwich for lunch each

one of these so-called games might have

been the beginning of a career and yet

we had to settle on only a single option

done repeatedly for over 50 years we are

so much more than the world of work ever

allows us to be in his song of myself

published in eighteen fifty five the

American poet Walt Whitman gave our

multiplicity memorable expression I am

large I contain multitudes by which

Whitman meant that there is so many

interesting attractive and viable

versions of oneself so many good ways

one could potentially live and work but

very few of these ever get properly

played out and become real in the course

of the single life we have no wonder if

we're often conscious of our unfulfilled

destinies and at times recognize with a

legitimate sense of agony that we really

could well have succeeded at doing

something else if not our fault that

we've not been able to give our

multitudes expression the modern job

market gives us no option but to

specialize we can't be an airline pilot

one afternoon a week at research in two

days a month a singer-songwriter in the

evenings while holding down part-time

work as a political advisor a plumber a

dress designer a tennis coach a travel

agent and being additionally the owner

of a small restaurant

lebanese mezack however much this might

be the ideal arrangement to do justice

to our widespread interests and

potential the reason or we cannot do so

much were first elaborated at the end of

the eighteenth century by the Scottish

philosopher adam smith in the wealth of

nations Smith explained how what he

termed the division of labour massively

increases collective productivity in a

society where everyone does everything

only a small number of shoes houses

nails bushels of wheat horse bridles and

cartwheels but ever produced and no one

is especially good at anything but if

people specialize in just one small area

making rivets shaping spokes

manufacturing rope bricklaying etc they

become very much faster and more

efficient in their work and collectively

the level of production is greatly

increased by focusing our efforts we

lose out on the enjoyment of

multiplicity yet our society becomes

overall far wealthier and better

supplied with the goods it needs it's a

tribute to the world Smith foresaw that

we have ended up with job titles like

senior packaging and branding designer

intake and triage clinician research

center manager risk and internal audit

controller and transport policy

consultant in other words tiny cogs in a

giant efficient machine hugely richer

but full of private longings to give our

multitudinous self-expression one of

Adam Smith's most intelligent and

penetrating readers with the German

economist Karl Marx marks agreed

entirely with Smith's analysis

specialization had transformed the world

and possessed the revolutionary power to

enrich individuals and nations but where

he differed from Smith was in his

assessment of how desirable this

development might be we would certainly

make ourselves a wealthier by

specializing but we would also if he

pointed out with passion dull our lives

and cauterize our talents in describing

his utopian communist Society marks

place enormous emphasis on the idea of

everyone having many different jobs

there were to be no specialists here in

a pointed dig at Smith he wrote in

communist society nobody has one

exclusive

of activity but each can become

accomplished in any branch he wishes

thus it's possible for me to do one

thing today and another tomorrow to hunt

in the morning to fish in the afternoon

to rear cattle in the evening to

criticize after dinner without ever

becoming a hunter or fisherman a

shepherd or a critic it's a beautiful

but entirely unrealistic dream we have

collectively chosen to make work pay

more rather than be more interesting

it's a somber thought but a consoling

one to our suffering is painful but it

has a curious dignity to it because it

doesn't uniquely affect us as

individuals it applies as much to the

CEO as to the intern to the artist as

much as to the accountant everyone could

have found so many versions of happiness

that will elude them in suffering in

this way we are participating in the

common human lot we can be sure that

whatever we do parts of our potential

will have to go undeveloped and die

without ever having had the chance to

come to full maturity for the sake of

the real benefits of focus and

specialization

you