"If you have multiple interests, don't waste the next 2~3 years" article has received tens of millions of views, and a second cultural renaissance is happening.

Dan straightforwardly states: society makes you think that having multiple interests is a weakness. Most people follow a sequence: go to school, get a degree, find a job, retire at some point. But he points out that this entire setup has many problems. We are no longer living in the industrial age. Specializing in a single skill is almost equivalent to slow death. He describes: we are in the midst of a “Second Renaissance.” In today’s world, curiosity and a love for learning are advantages.

Dan reflects on his own experience in the article, stating that after many years of engaging in various learning pursuits, he fell into a cycle of absorbing tutorials without applying them. The short-term sense of achievement mainly came from understanding more, but life and career did not fundamentally improve because of it. It wasn’t until he realized the need for a “container” that could integrate interests and turn curiosity into valuable results that he found a breakthrough.

Starting from industrial division of labor: experts are not necessarily freer, they may be more dependent

The article first points to the societal assumption of high specialization. Borrowing Adam Smith’s critique of division of labor, Dan notes that industrialization has achieved efficiency through division of labor but also shaped education and employment systems toward “punctuality, obedience, and replaceability.” He believes that when individuals are trained into small parts of a process, productivity increases, but they also become more likely to lose grasp of the overall operation, ultimately outsourcing judgment, learning, and action, leading to dependence.

In his framework, to become more autonomous, individuals need three elements: self-education capable of leading learning, willingness to follow internal motivation and self-interest, and self-sufficiency that does not outsource judgment and initiative. He believes these three naturally lead to a generalist approach: not just superficial knowledge of many things, but cross-domain understanding, resource integration, and quick adaptation in changing circumstances.

The Second Renaissance: Lowered Knowledge Barriers and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives as a Moat

Dan further compares the current era to a “Second Renaissance.” He believes that what is truly hard to replicate is not the skill itself but the perspectives formed through personal experience and cross-domain accumulation. As AI gradually takes over standardized outputs, those who can pose unique questions and see opportunities through interdisciplinary approaches are becoming more scarce.

He uses the printing press as a historical analogy: when knowledge supply surged and costs dropped in the short term, it enabled cross-disciplinary talents like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to delve into multiple fields within their lifetime. Dan thinks that today’s internet, social media, and AI tools serve as accelerators of knowledge dissemination, making it more likely for individuals to create new value through cross-domain integration.

Multiple interests must be monetizable: attention and creation are entry points, products and systems are the output

Regarding “how to turn interests into a lifestyle,” Dan’s answer is pragmatic: to profit from interests, you must make others interested in your interests and establish a paid pathway. He sees that as the barriers to software and content production lower, “being seen” becomes a crucial scarce resource. Therefore, individuals need to master basic distribution and persuasion skills, and social platforms are currently the main attention arenas.

However, he emphasizes that “becoming a creator” does not necessarily mean becoming an internet celebrity, but rather viewing creation as the foundational infrastructure for independent work: redefining learning as research, forming content assets through public records, and ultimately leading to sellable products or services.

In path design, Dan contrasts two common models: one is skill-oriented, centered on a single sellable skill with teaching as a monetization method; the other is growth-oriented, with personal development as the main thread, teaching along the way, and using products to accelerate others’ growth. He prefers the latter because multi-interest individuals are often hard to confine with a single niche but can still build clear themes around eternal needs like health, wealth, relationships, and happiness.

On community management, Dan defines a brand as an “environment that induces change,” rather than just profile pictures, bios, or one-time visual designs. He believes that a brand is more like long-term accumulation: after months of followers, the worldview and trust formed in their minds are what truly constitute the brand.

He also states that the core of content strategy is novel perspectives and high signal density. In an era of information explosion and AI-generated content, creators should build their own idea museums (note repositories, material libraries), continuously collect high-density sources (classic books, curation accounts, quality articles), and repeatedly deconstruct and rewrite ideas in different structures to train output skills and avoid creative burnout.

Product trends: from selling tools to selling systems

On the product side, Dan emphasizes the importance of systems. He believes the market does not lack solutions, but lacks “how you use your own methods to achieve results.” Instead of offering scattered tools, it’s better to package verified personal processes, templates, rhythms, and distribution strategies into replicable systems, so that the audience buys a comprehensive, actionable approach rather than abstract knowledge.

This article, “If You Have Multiple Interests, Don’t Waste the Next 2~3 Years,” has garnered millions of views. The Second Renaissance is happening. Originally published in Chain News ABMedia.