Beyond One Discipline
As I get closer to turning 32, only 6 days left, InshAllah, I thought this would be the perfect time to reflect on one of the strangest things about my life. It has always been both a blessing and a curse. For me, though, I thank Allah for it every single day.
Throughout my life, people have criticized me. Sometimes it was constructive criticism, which I genuinely appreciate. Most of the time, however, it happened behind my back, only for it to eventually make its way back to me. Let's be honest, these days everything eventually reaches you. I never paid much attention to it, and occasionally I even found it amusing. Hearing someone criticize me in such a strange way sometimes made me smile.
Usually, when people criticize you behind your back, it is because they see a flaw, a weakness, or something missing in you. Ironically, the thing people kept criticizing me for was never a weakness. It was the complete opposite.
The criticism was always the same.
"You know too many things."
Imagine criticizing someone today for something that would have been completely normal throughout history. Imagine if Ibn Rushd or Ibn Khaldun were alive today. People would probably dismiss them by saying, "He thinks he knows everything." Imagine Leonardo da Vinci living in our era. People would criticize him because he understood painting, medicine, philosophy, engineering, anatomy, and countless other disciplines. That is the reality we live in today.
We live in an age that worships specialization. Society rewards people who stay inside one narrow field. The moment they step outside it, they suddenly appear lost. Experts inside their niche can become complete beginners the moment the conversation shifts elsewhere.
Because of that, I never saw this criticism as something negative. If anything, I took it as a compliment.
I simply do not care what people think because we are on this earth to learn, to grow, and to move forward. We are not here to lock ourselves into one tiny corner of knowledge for our entire lives. Then one day we have children and expect them to limit themselves in exactly the same way.
Otherwise, the moment your children ask you something outside your professional field, you realize you have nothing valuable to give them. To me, that is one of the saddest positions a person can find themselves in. Becoming someone who appears intellectually limited in the eyes of their own children.
For me, this curiosity has always been a blessing.
I genuinely love learning. I am naturally curious. I never stop exploring new subjects, and I have more hobbies and interests than I can count.
Art, philosophy, history, politics, psychology, economics, technology. If something captures my attention, I will dedicate time to understanding it.
This obsession started back in high school. During my final year, I challenged myself to read 100 books in a single year. I never reached that goal because, looking back, it was ridiculously unrealistic. Still, the journey itself changed my life.
Among those books was one that introduced me to the idea of the polymath. It talked about extraordinary individuals like Leonardo da Vinci who mastered multiple disciplines instead of dedicating their entire lives to just one. I honestly cannot remember the title anymore. I remember it also discussed ideas like the 10 000 hour rule for mastery, but the concept that stayed with me was something much simpler.
Divide your year into four quarters.
Dedicate each quarter entirely to one skill or one area of interest until you become genuinely competent at it.
That single idea started a journey that has now lasted for more than a decade.
I also thank Allah that we were born during the age of the internet, YouTube, and endless educational resources. Learning has never been easier.
Every year I create a plan with four skills or interests I want to develop. During each three month period, I focus almost exclusively on one of them. By the end of the year, I have made meaningful progress in four completely different areas.
I am definitely not claiming to be a modern Leonardo da Vinci.
But since I started following this system in 2013 until today in 2026, I have accumulated an incredible collection of skills that I would never have developed otherwise.
Even today, I still follow the same approach.
The goal has never been to impress anyone. It has always been to satisfy my curiosity. Whenever I discover a subject that fascinates me, I happily dedicate the next three months to learning it.
The benefits are enormous.
It improves your conversations, your relationships, and the way you understand the world. Your mind becomes more flexible. You start connecting ideas that most people never think to combine. You solve problems faster because your brain can draw solutions from different fields instead of only one. You become someone who can genuinely help people because your perspective is much broader.
The problem is that the professional world often rewards the exact opposite.
If you are applying for a job and your CV shows that you possess many advanced skills, skills that often take years to master individually, many employers simply will not believe you. Their first assumption is that you must be average at all of them because they are looking for someone who specializes in only one thing.
Ironically, throughout my career I have consistently outperformed many specialists because my work combines everything I have learned across multiple disciplines. Every project benefits from knowledge that comes from design, branding, psychology, business, technology, communication, history, and many other fields. The final result feels different because it is built from connections that specialists often never make.
That, however, is a story for another day.
To be fair, this mindset has made my career more difficult in traditional companies. It is probably one of the reasons I eventually became independent instead of remaining inside organizations that reward narrow thinking and narrow expertise.
The funny part is that the world's strongest economy, the United States, built much of its dominance through startups. Those startups rarely look for people who only know one thing. They actively seek people who can wear multiple hats, people we would now call modern polymaths.
Google even popularized a term for this kind of person.
The T shaped professional.
The horizontal line of the T represents broad knowledge across many fields. The vertical line represents one area of deep expertise. This profile has become extremely valuable throughout Silicon Valley because startups need people who can connect disciplines rather than live inside only one of them.
Meanwhile, countries whose educational and professional systems primarily reward intellectual narrowness often struggle to remain competitive. I cannot say there is a direct causal relationship because I do not have the data to prove it. It is simply an observation that I find interesting.
That is why, although people used to criticize me for knowing too many things, the older I become, and the more I see how these skills help me navigate entrepreneurship and life itself, the more convinced I become that this is the right way to live.
Even if the system rewards specialization.
Allah gave us minds.
He commanded us to seek knowledge, to learn, to reflect, to purify ourselves through knowledge, and to share what we learn with others.
That should be every person's mission.
There is no reason for a human being to remain intellectually confined.
Some people allow their degree to define who they are.
Others allow the applause they receive for one skill to trap them there forever. They become afraid to grow because they are comfortable being known for that one thing.
The examples are endless.
But that is simply not the way I believe life should be lived.
If you are reading this and you also have countless interests, many skills, or an endless list of things you still want to learn, my advice is simple.
Ignore anyone who labels you as "Fhamator"
Ignore all the noise.
Learn everything you can.
Feed your curiosity.
Because curiosity is one of the greatest blessings Allah can place inside a person.
People love repeating the phrase, "Jack of all trades, master of none."
I prefer a different version.
Jack of all trades.
Master of all.
Alhamdulillah for the blessing of intellect, and for every blessing Allah has given us.
