Table-Shaped Man

Like T-shaped but better

Author

Graydon Ursel
March 07, 2024

In 2013, I read an article on being a “T-Shaped Man”...

Such a man goes DEEP in one skill and dabbles in a bunch of others.

It’s kind of like a Renaissance Man but with a focus on one core area of expertise.

Cool idea, but it’s been 11 years. Time to iterate.

Introducing a new and improved framework:

The Table-Shaped Man.

This concept is extremely smart and profound.

You go deep in TWO areas, instead of one.

Why is this better?

It makes it easier to become the best in the world.

Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert), created a famous blog post on this.

He says to become the best in the world, you can either:

  1. Become THE best at one thing (T-shaped)

  2. Become very good (top 25%) at 2 or more things (Table-shaped)

Top .01% at one thing is hard. Top 25% in 2 or more is easy.

Combining top 25% skills is how you create your own niche.

For example… Scott Adams isn’t the best drawer or comedian in the world.

BUT, he became the best in the world at creating funny comic strips.

I don’t know about you, but I fucking love this idea.

Create a niche for yourself that no one has seen before.

Right now I’m going deep into two comically unrelated pursuits:

Copywriting and saxophone.

How will these skills combine to make millions?

I have no idea. And that's ok.

All I know is that playing sax on a table in Medellín scored me 8 more shows in Colombia over these next 3 weeks.

I am now a traveling artist, which is going to give me more crazy shit to write about in this newsletter. 😉

Lastly, from a superficial standpoint, combining skills makes you more interesting.

My main thing is my marketing agency, but being an “agency bro” is boring.

I'd rather be an oddity. A walking contradiction. Someone who people can't put their finger on.

We live in the best time for this, by the way.

It’s 2024. You can be whoever you damn well please.

See ya’ll next week ✌️

Cool things I found during my weekly internet stroll.

Ideogram.ai just released its 1.0 text-to-image model that renders text perfectly. This shit is moving so fast.

Made with Ideogram.ai

Athena has the slickest positioning for a virtual assistant service I’ve seen. Pricey though at $3k/m. They are prob paying their assistants $700-$1000/m. I’d rather pay someone more and train them myself.

This is most beautiful feedback loop in existence.

The greatest troll to ever live. What a time to be alive.

 

Served up by Spijker. \ SP = Spotify, YT = Youtube (No Spotify track)