Twitter's viral post with millions of views: If you have diverse interests, don't waste time in the next 2-3 years

Author: DAN KOE

Translation: randomarea

Introduction

Society makes you think that having broad interests is a flaw.

Go to school.

Get a degree.

Find a job.

Retire at some point.

But this life sequence has too many problems.

We no longer live in the industrial age. Betting everything on a single skill is almost like slow suicide. Today, we all probably understand: mechanical lifestyles, siloed learning, are extremely dangerous to your mind and soul. People can also feel that we are experiencing a “Second Renaissance.” Your curiosity and desire to learn are advantages in the modern world—but there’s a missing piece.

For a long time, I kept learning, learning, learning. I was trapped in “tutorial hell.” Some people call it “shiny object syndrome,” pointing out your lack of focus. I got dopamine from feeling smart, but my life didn’t change much. Honestly, I felt I was just falling further behind. In college, I tried too many different things. I dreamed: to do my own thing… to earn income through creative work… but after five years of “learning,” reality hit: to survive, I had to find the best job I could get.

What I was missing was a “vehicle.”

A vessel that allows me to channel all my interests into meaningful work and earn a decent income from it.

If you’ve ever felt guilty because you couldn’t “pick one thing”; if you’ve been told to “niche down,” but your brain just wants to keep expanding; if you’ve doubted whether there’s a path that doesn’t lead to the pain you see in others—then now is the best time to be alive.

Below are the seven most convincing points I can think of. First, we’ll understand why broad interests are a superpower in the modern world; then I’ll give actionable steps to turn it into your lifelong career. There’s a lot to discuss, so I hope you’re ready to stay with me.

I — The Three Keys to Personal Success and the End of “Expert” Culture

“A person who spends their whole life repeating a few simple actions… usually becomes as dull and ignorant as possible.” — Adam Smith

Mr. Smith, you’re quite clever—because these people are precisely what you created, and we are still feeling the backlash.

Specialization took over society during the industrial age: take a needle factory as an example. One worker completes all steps, making 20 needles a day; when the process is split into multiple steps, with different workers doing small parts, total output can reach 48,000 needles.

So, we built the entire world around this model.

Humans became nine-to-five assembly line workers. Ultimately, governments no longer serve national interests but their own; companies don’t serve employees but their own interests.

School systems are designed precisely to serve this interest structure. Their only goal is to mass-produce punctual, obedient factory workers.

But this is not how humans are meant to live.

If you want to acquire “expertise” to the point where you can never run a business—especially your own—then you will rely on school for education and work for income. You’ll be fooled into believing that specialization makes you “valuable.” But the reality is clear: this system doesn’t need “you” as a specific person to complete the task.

That’s the difference.

If pure specialization makes people dull and dependent, then what makes an individual smart and autonomous?

Three elements: self-education, self-interest, and self-sufficiency.

Self-education is clear: if you want different results from traditional education, you must take charge of your own learning.

Self-interest may sound suspicious. It seems selfish and shortsighted; many people unthinkingly see it as “bad.” But it simply means “concern for oneself.” Because the alternative is serving the interests of the organizations that make up the current society—we’ve discussed this before. In other words, pursue your interests, because your interests are likely to benefit others in a selfless way—depending on your level of cognition and moral development. By the way: indulging in short-term pleasures (cheap dopamine) is usually not in your best interest, but in the interest of companies that profit from your numbness.

“In Ayn Rand’s view, a truly selfish person is a person with self-respect and independence: someone who neither sacrifices others for themselves nor sacrifices themselves for others. This rejects the roles of ‘predator’ and ‘doormat.’”

Self-sufficiency is about refusing to outsource your judgment, learning, and agency. If self-education is the engine, and self-interest is the compass, then self-sufficiency is the foundation: it keeps your life’s direction from being hijacked by external forces. The three work together, but are not entirely dependent on each other.

Generalists naturally emerge within this triad.

Self-interest drives self-education.

You learn because it truly serves your growth and prosperity, not because someone assigned you homework.

Self-education fosters self-sufficiency.

You can only stay autonomous within the domains you understand.

Self-sufficiency clarifies self-interest.

When you no longer rely on others’ explanations, you can see clearly what benefits you. Most people chase multiple interests to escape work; when your interests become your work or your lifelong career, most of those interests will naturally be filtered out.

Looking at the CEOs, founders, or creators we truly admire, we find they are almost all generalists.

They know enough about marketing to direct; about product to build; about people to lead teams. But they also must steer—when circumstances change, they must learn and adapt.

More importantly: they understand that cross-disciplinary ideas can complement each other, forming a unique worldview. It allows them to capture new ideas from the “ether” and translate them into market value.

If you see the current world’s trajectory clearly, and understand the opportunities available to individuals (not just leaders), you’ll find: as a natural polymath, your options are vast. This should excite you immensely.

II — You Are Living Through the Second Renaissance: Seize the Opportunity

“Study the science of art, and the art of science. Train your senses—especially learn how to ‘see.’ Recognize that everything is interconnected.” — Leonardo da Vinci

In my view, the ultimate moat—or the last competitive advantage worth paying for—is perspective.

A viewpoint only you can see, shaped by your unique life experiences. It might be the last thing others cannot copy.

Since it’s always been this way, why not prioritize it now? Especially as automation is knocking at our door.

But the question is: how do you prioritize it? How do you develop it?

The answer: pursue multiple interests and build something with them.

Every interest you pursue leaves a residue. Each interest increases the number of connections you can build. Each interest expands and enhances the complexity of your model of reality. The more complex your model, the more problems you can solve, the more opportunities you see, and the more value you can create. Specialization will completely halt this process, and your “shiny object syndrome” keeps reminding you of this.

From birth until now, you’ve been cultivating a “way of seeing the world” that others don’t have. A way of thinking that an AI can only “think” when you tell it how to think.

People who study psychology and design see user behavior differently from pure designers; those who study sales and philosophy approach closing deals differently from pure salespeople; those who understand fitness and business can build health companies that even MBAs can’t understand.

Your advantage comes more from “crossroads” than from being a “specialist” in a single field.

This is exactly the pattern we saw during the (historical) Renaissance—and now, it’s returning with even greater force.

Think back: what made the Renaissance possible…

Before the invention of the printing press, knowledge was extremely scarce.

Books were copied by hand. A single manuscript could take months to complete. Libraries were rare, literacy was even rarer. If you wanted to learn something outside your craft, you either had access to monasteries or you couldn’t learn at all.

Then Gutenberg changed everything.

Within 50 years, 20 million books flooded into Europe. Ideas that once took generations to spread could now spread in months. Literacy rates soared, and the cost of knowledge collapsed.

For the first time in history, a person could truly pursue mastery in multiple fields within a lifetime.

And thus, the Renaissance was born.

Da Vinci didn’t “pick just one thing.” He painted, sculpted, designed engineering projects, studied anatomy, designed war machines, drew human body charts. Michelangelo was both a painter and a sculptor, architect, and poet.

Unique minds could finally operate as they were meant to.

They were meant to cross disciplines, synthesize connections, and let curiosity take them anywhere—but most of us never realized this.

The printing press was the catalyst: it gave rise to a new kind of person—a person who can learn anything, connect everything, and create things no specialist could.

III — How to Turn Multiple Interests into a Profitable Lifestyle

So far, we know a few things:

• You have broad interests but feel it’s impossible to keep learning forever.
• You love self-education based on interests but have to carve out time outside your career.
• You understand the necessity of “self-sufficiency,” but feel you don’t yet have “something worth paying for.”
• You need to adapt quickly because we have no idea what future work will look like.

So, the question is: how do we combine all these into a lifestyle?

How do we merge “learning” and “earning” into something you can work with?

I’ll try to make it logical.

To make money from interests, you first need others to be interested too. This part is simple: if something interests you, it can also interest others. You just need to learn how to persuade.

Next, you need a way for them to pay. Usually, this means selling products—because you’re unlikely to find a job that fully expresses your interests; investing in stocks or real estate (to scale effectively) requires significant capital.

In other words: attention.

Attention is one of the last few moats.

Because when anyone can write anything or build any software, who wins? The one who is “known.” You can have the best product in the world, but if no one knows about it, then the person who captures and holds attention will leave you behind.

By the way: if you’ve been paying attention to the tech world, you’ll know—I don’t think everyone will “build their own software.” Most people won’t spend 20 minutes cooking. They prefer to spend a few more dollars on Uber Eats. People have their own things they want to spend time on.

Back to the point:

You need to become a creator.

Before you frown and give up—I don’t mean “become a content creator” (well… that’s complicated).

I mean: if you don’t want to keep creating for others just to get paid, then the solution is to create for yourself.

Humans are born creators, but we’ve been convinced to believe: turning ourselves into machines is the way to the “American Dream.” Our essence is tool-making. We thrive in any niche because we create solutions for problems. If you put a lion in Alaska, it won’t build shelter or clothes—it will die. Lions belong in their own niche.

The key is: now, every business is essentially a media business. Remember, you need attention. Attention is mainly on social media—until the next “attention platform” emerges; then you’ll have to adapt again. So yes, if you have broad interests, it’s smarter to think of yourself as a “content creator”; but perhaps a simpler way to understand it is: treat social media as a mechanism to get your interests seen by more people. It’s just one piece of the puzzle.

And it covers several of our earlier needs.

You love learning? Great, redefine it as “research,” and it becomes your main work. Most of what I write is just me learning my interests and using social media as “public note-taking.”

(You’re already spending time learning; now, just turn that time into “learning in public,” and boom—you have a foundation for a business.)

You need self-sufficiency? Then you need a business; and every business needs customers; and you probably don’t care about (two f*cks) paid ads, SEO, or any other marketing—this is why many get stuck: they’re used to being employees, doing a specialized task within a company.

You need to adapt quickly? Great—you can launch new products to your audience as fast as you build them. I have a steady audience; even if the next product fails, there will be people willing to invest, join the team, or support the next one. You can also run your own small SaaS company, but without distribution channels, you’ll need to run extra marathons: raise capital, find talent, push things forward.

No other work or business model allows you to do all this with such high freedom.

But how do you start?

How do you tie all this together?

IV — How to Turn Yourself into a Business

Unfortunately, “entrepreneurship” and “business” have become dirty words, making many feel unqualified to pursue that path, so much so that when opportunities arise, they don’t even notice.

If you’ve ever used your interests to help others, then you’re qualified to start a business.

Starting a business no longer requires massive startup capital. It’s no longer the exclusive domain of “unscrupulous elites.” It’s not just for those wanting to make a lot of money. It’s not only for “talented” or “special” people.

The reality is: entrepreneurship is in our nature. It’s a modern way of survival. We are “programmed” to create and distribute value to like-minded people; to hunt, explore the unknown, seek novelty, and never stagnate. Psychologically, it’s the most rewarding lifestyle—despite the lows, because lows are precisely the precondition for (non-artificial) highs.

Moreover, the entry barrier has collapsed.

All you really need is a laptop and an internet connection.

Thanks to social media, distribution is now almost free (strictly speaking, it’s “skill-driven,” and skills may take time to develop). Anyone can publish an idea that reaches millions. If you have a product and know what you’re doing, those millions of eyes can turn into millions of dollars—of course, “knowing what you’re doing” is a big assumption. Most people are just passionate about honing a skill or interest, but it doesn’t directly impact their success; perhaps they’re afraid of facing “success” itself.

Tools and technology now handle what used to require teams. You can use AI, and there are many useful software tools available.

Now, you have two starting paths.

Path 1) Skill-Based

This path has dominated the internet for a long time: you “learn a marketable skill”; you teach that skill through content; then you sell products or services related to that skill.

Its limitation is the “specialist” limitation: one dimension. You box yourself in. You narrow your field because someone told you it’s more profitable; and when you chase profit over interest, you often recreate a second nine-to-five: doing work you don’t care about, serving people you don’t care about.

Path 2) Development-Oriented

Today’s top creators are those without a “niche that can be nailed down.” They usually focus on one of four eternal markets: health, wealth, relationships, happiness—or all of them. Strictly speaking, everyone’s “niche” is self-actualization; but each person’s path to it is different.

• Pursue your own goals (brand).
• Teach what you learn (content).
• Help others reach their goals faster (products).

For broad interests, I obviously recommend the second path because it’s deeper.

First, when you walk this path, you’re also walking the first. Because building a brand, content, and products forces you to master all related marketable skills; so even if you fail, you still have “something worth paying for.” You’re building your business; if you do well in one part, you can help others in another.

Second, it flips the traditional model.

You no longer start by “crafting a customer avatar” to narrow your niche and serve that one audience; instead, you turn yourself into the customer avatar.

This makes everything much more natural.

Pursue and develop your life goals → Verify that what you offer is genuinely useful → Help “your past self” achieve the same goals faster.

Don’t be a YouTube creator.

Don’t build a “personal brand.”

Don’t be an influencer.

Be yourself. But place yourself where your work can be discovered, noticed, supported. Now and in the foreseeable future, that place is the internet.

Jordan Peterson (or similar figures) are not “content creators,” even if they seem to be.

They tour, write books, use social media as a base, and leverage every tool at their disposal to spread their lifelong work. They don’t worry about the latest “content trend.” The quality of their thinking sets them apart and changes lives (regardless of your opinion of Peterson).

Based on this, I want to offer a different perspective on “brand, content, and products.” That way, you can see it as a vessel carrying your lifelong career.

V — A Brand Is an Environment

Don’t think of “brand” as just an avatar or social media bio.

A brand is an environment where people come to transform.

It’s a small world you invite others into.

A brand isn’t something that’s “shown” only when someone first visits your profile.

It’s the collection of ideas, stories, and philosophies that accumulate in the mind of a reader after 3-6 months of following you.

At every touchpoint, you present your worldview, stories, and life philosophy: banners, avatars, bios, links in bios, landing page design, pinned content, posts, threads, newsletters, videos, etc.

In other words, your brand probably looks like this:

Your brand is your story.

Take a day to write it down: where you come from, your “low points,” what you’ve experienced, what skills you’ve gained, and how these have helped you the most.

When you’re brainstorming ideas, content, or products, use your story to filter them. It doesn’t mean you should always talk about yourself, but that everything you say should align to keep your brand consistent.

The hard part is: you need to realize your story is worth telling—even if you think it’s boring, or you haven’t reflected deeply on your growth.

The key points:

Your bio and avatar aren’t that important. Some people have only one word in their bio, and a single color as their avatar.

My advice:

• List 5-10 people you respect online.
• Look at their avatars, bios, and content.
• Notice what they have in common.
• Start imagining how to craft your own brand, adding your own small changes.

Honestly, I wouldn’t overcomplicate it, and I wouldn’t worry too much. Your brand will naturally take shape as you start creating content. We can even say: your brand is your content, so we need to get content right.

This article might help you: How to Build Your Own Content Ecosystem.

VI — Content Is a New Perspective

The internet is a firehose of information.

AI will only add more noise.

This means: trust and signal are more important than ever.

In my view, your content should be guided by a “lighthouse”: curate the best ideas into one place. Your brand is everything you care about, collected in your own words, under one account, on the internet.

If you plan to do podcasts or public speaking, observe: the best speakers always have 5-10 core arguments or ideas in mind. They repeat these ideas and build influence around them. If you don’t have those 5-10 ideas, you won’t have the same impact. Producing lots of content is how you discover these ideas.

As your content increases in “idea density” over time and effort, it will form a brand worth attention—and even worth paying for.

Your goal in curating ideas into your brand should be at the intersection of:

• Performance — the idea has potential to “perform well.” It measures how much others will care.
• Excitement — the idea excites you to write about. It measures how much you care.

Art and business.

Metrics and performance shouldn’t decide everything, but they do mean something.

Step 1) Build an “Idea Museum”

Most successful creators have a secret: they curate their notes, ideas, and sources of inspiration very strictly.

In other words, they have a “swipe file”—a collection of materials and ideas.

You can use Eden (if you have access), Apple Notes, Notion, or any tool you prefer, but I want to be very clear:

You need a place to jot down ideas immediately when they appear.

This is a key habit.

Whenever you encounter an idea that’s “useful now” or “will be useful soon,” write it down. You don’t need content pillars or fixed topics. Your curated ideas only need to matter to you. That alone means they relate to a specific audience—that is, yourself. Of course, you can also create a “content map”: the-content-map-how-to-never-run.

I don’t care what structure you use. It can be a neat, organized document or a messy, continuously growing set of notes. Habit is more important than format.

You can evaluate whether a post has potential resonance by a quick glance at likes, views, or overall engagement. If an idea gets little response or clearly underperforms compared to others, it probably won’t perform well for you either.

You can also gauge excitement by a feeling: when you think “if I don’t write this down, I’m wasting something valuable,” it often means it’s worth capturing.

Step 2) Curate Around “Idea Density”

How do you start filling your idea museum?

You need 3-5 “high signal” sources.

By “high signal,” I mean ideas with high relevance and clarity.

It’s hard to explain how to find high-signal content because it’s very subjective. It depends on your stage of development (what’s useful to you), your audience’s stage (what’s useful to them), and your ability to translate “your understanding” into “things they can use.”

The most basic advice might be the most valuable to someone; but to you, it might seem just common sense.

Over time, you’ll learn to calibrate your signal-to-noise ratio by observing which ideas resonate with your audience and which don’t.

The highest “high signal” sources:

• Old or obscure books—I have five books I keep rereading because their ideas are so good. Eternal principles reside there, untouched by trends.
• Curated blogs, accounts, or books—like Farnam Street curating modern thinkers’ best ideas; like Naval’s account curating Naval’s top insights; like “The Maxwell Daily Reader,” which distills Maxwell’s best ideas into 365 days of daily insights. These sources do a lot of “filtering” for you, so you can pick the best from the best.
• High-quality social media accounts—I have a list of about five accounts that always post great ideas. When I don’t know what to write, I scroll their pages, find a point I agree with, and write about it.

Finding these sources takes months of exploration. But maintaining a high-density idea museum will push you toward a result: producing high-density content.

Your idea museum will become the external manifestation of the mind you’re trying to build.

That’s the ultimate goal.

The goal is to have a content library—so good that people can’t help but open your emails, check your posts, share your ideas with friends, and often think of your ideas.

You will become a “curator of ideas”: curating ideas that people wouldn’t even think to ask AI about, ideas they would never stumble upon through casual browsing.

This will make your success less dependent on algorithms.

Step 3) Write 1 Idea in 1000 Ways

Becoming a good writer or speaker isn’t just about “the idea itself,” but about “how you express that idea.”

Ideas carry a lot of weight, but structure makes them attractive, unique, and impactful.

Let me give an example.

Suppose you use this post structure:

I observe a pattern among happy people: they are extremely committed to keeping their minds clear.

The idea here is: happy people keep their minds clear.

The structure has two parts: a “hook” in the form of observation, and a specific delivery of that observation.

It looks simple, but differences in structure can make a huge difference.

Now, if I express the same idea using a “list” structure:

Happy people are clear-minded people:

• They make time for rest
• They focus on a single goal
• They ruthlessly clear distractions

In other words, happy people are extremely committed to keeping their minds clear.

Same idea. Different structure. Different effect.

If you want, you can practice “writing the same idea” with every post structure you encounter.

Here’s how:

Step 1: Break down the structure of three ideas.

Choose three posts from your idea museum that resonate with you. Then try to dissect each part and write down why it works.

If you lack experience in content psychology, that’s okay. You’ll learn through practice.

Now is a good time to let AI help. You can try this prompt for each post:

Please analyze this social media post comprehensively: the core idea overall, sentence structure, word choice. Analyze why people engage with it, why it’s effective, what psychological strategies it uses, and how I can replicate this style step-by-step for my own ideas.

Then paste the post content below the prompt.

If choosing a model, I recommend Claude over ChatGPT or Gemini.

Any ideas you encounter along the way that you want to incorporate into your style can be analyzed this way. It also works for videos, not just text posts.

Step 2: Rewrite three ideas using different structures.

Return to your idea museum, pick one idea you didn’t use in Step 1, and rewrite it using the three structures you just dissected.

This is how you expand your expressive range.

This is how you stop staring at a blank screen.

This is how you turn one idea into a week’s worth of content.

Why do this?

Because by now, you’ve mastered the secrets of “creating standout content” and “coming up with good ideas.”

Really, that’s all the secret is. Everything else is just practice.

VII — Systems Are the New Product

Alright, this article is already quite long, so I’ll speed up now.

And I already have a comprehensive guide on “How to Build Your First Product”: mega-guide-how-to-create-your-first…… so I won’t repeat too much here.

At this moment, we are in a “systems economy.”

People don’t want just a “solution.”

They want your solution.

There are many writing products on the market. Take my 2 Hour Writer (2HW) as an example—what makes it different? Or Eden—the software I’m building; in the eyes of some “very smart people who have successfully built products in YouTube comments,” it “can easily be replaced by Google Drive or Dropbox.”

They’re different because they are systems I built based on my own results.

2HW doesn’t teach a bunch of academic writing nonsense—that stuff doesn’t help you realize our shared vision: living a creative and meaningful life.

I used to have a few problems:

• I found it hard to consistently generate content ideas.
• I didn’t want to waste a lot of time creating content for different platforms.

So, I started experimenting with my own system.

The system’s goal is clear: write all the content I need in less than 2 hours a day. This way, my audience growth is “automated”; I can focus on building better products and enjoying life.

I began testing various “how to get more content ideas” schemes.

I built a swipe file, step-by-step idea generation, and templates for when I still can’t think of anything.

I scheduled my weekly content: 3 posts daily; 1 thread weekly; 1 newsletter weekly.

During this process, I realized I could synchronize my content across all social platforms (this is public—you can see it). I also realized: threads can become carousels, newsletters can become YouTube videos.

If the system isn’t working smoothly, I try new things the next week.

Then I realized: I can copy and paste my newsletter directly into my blog, embed YouTube videos into that blog, promote my products there, and turn that blog into a source of more content ideas.

Next, I can post that blog link daily under my content.

This will bring more newsletter subscriptions, YouTube followers, and product sales.

I realized: if everything I do centers around the newsletter, then whether I’m growing my audience or promoting products, I only need to focus on that one thing.

This is how you stand out in a world flooded with “copy-paste products.”

Yes, it takes time and experience.

But the final result is very worthwhile.

That’s all for this letter.

Thanks for reading.

— Dan

First, if you’ve read this far, I like you. You’re willing to read long content.

If you want to support this letter, consider subscribing to a paid tier. The content I offer includes: a complete course on “How to Start a Solo Business,” prompts for “Resetting Your Life,” and my writing strategies I use when inspiration runs dry.