Should you stick to just one profession all your life?

Although it seems to be a better way of living life but "a jack of all trades is a master of none" ! It could be a part of entertainment to be a SCUBA Diver , and photography and could be lucrative to some extent also but could not be chosen as a profession.

The_Big_KMost of us stick to just one profession all our lives.
Isn't it a very limited way of looking at life? Your opinion, please?

This is so subjective an issue that one hesitates to say much to avoid pontificating. However, could not resist commenting
What is said here should be taken as mostly autobiographical.
Firstly, I agree that labelling oneself as 'this' or 'that' is restricting and limiting. We are just thinking creative humans. One could be an engineer, doctor, artist or an actor or even all of them.
My take is that nothing prevents one from being a multi-disciplinary person and having a fulfilling time.
While it is true that I have not had a shot at playing the ukelele or the Swiss Alpine Horn I did work on many different areas.
Even as part of my work at National Aerospace Labs I was involved (hands on) in many diverse areas from food processing, ultra pure metals, non-traditional machining processes to chemical analysis and much else besides. As part of my own interest, I involved with other institutes on appropriate technologies, developing teaching aids for the deaf and other disabled children, astronomy, alternate energy and environment protection.
Though it may well be a case of "a jack of all trades is a master of none" as RL says above, one need not be a jack ass. Also there is no obligation to be master of one trade. One can have a fulfilling time and have huge fun being a jack of all trades (or Chuck of all trades!)

While everyone can click a picture with a camera, very few have the level of talent required to monetize it. Now, one can quit one's job and go on taking pictures, but will he/she be able to make money from that enterprise is the question. If it's possible, then yes, by all means, one can do whatever one wishes.

Also, as long as one's profession is interesting, challenging and offers what one wants from it, there is really no need to switch professions. There is nothing wrong in being an electrical engineer all through one's working life. It's when the current profession becomes monotonous or boring or if it fails to offer what one is expecting, be it monetary or work-place related, then comes the need for a change of job. Only then we start looking for other avenues, either in our own line of work, or something completely unrelated.

As for the debate points,

1) It's possible, and can certainly be practical if one has a particular skill or talent that one can generate a revenue from. Sadly, not everyone has such a thing.

2) I would say, even if one goes in such a path as to completely change the line of work ever so often, it would still be worth it to pursue excellence and perfection in whatever one does. After all, whether we actually achieve excellence or perfection is secondary, the drive for achieving it is what will keep us going.

3) Not sure if it's better or worse. At the end, if we choose to do it this way, we would've probably seen and done more things, possibly met more people and had more experiences than people working a 'regular' job. But I don't know if it's better and if it is, how.

There is no need to skip the current professional until he/she is master in that field. And this wont cause any limits in life. Engineer->photographer->SCUBA drive All this depend on a person's interest.

some things in life are easier said than done.

it is better to concentrate on just one profession and make ourselves masters in it, than being the classic examples of the old saying "jacks of all trades, masters of none".

secondly even if we try a second profession, then do we have the time for it ?

First of all, "Not everyone is trying to achieve perfection."
What Biggie is suggesting is 'how about giving up one profession to take one completely different'.
This is something that I was exploring. How about setting time constraints? How about giving five years for each career option and try to excel in it in that time-period? We have just one life-time and not doing all the things we can, just because of pressure of the main-stream work is something that I was thinking of changing. For eg: One person has a lot of interest in dancing, painting, hard-core engineering, exploring the world, being a fashion-designer, being a theater actor et al - but he/she doesn't perceive it the way he/she should, because 'being a doctor' is what he/she loves doing too. We can't simple say, "One Life is Not Enough." and move on.
- Give it some thought. -
Is it feasible? - that is the question. May be the 'really rich' can try doing this. 😐 May be this would need guts of different level.

Would love to read what CEans think.

is it a voluntary decision? when someone is deriving enough satisfaction doing what they are doing - they could rather do it throughout their life.

When I graduated, I was completely clueless about what I was going to do in my life. But I've always had this larger than life image of entrepreneurs in my mind that I wanted to do something 'in business'. Entrepreneurship and business were exciting to me few years ago and are even more exciting to me today and I'm quite sure things won't change in future. I'm in a position where I enjoy doing what I love and every morning excites me about the work I'm going to to do for the rest of the day.

It's the non-ceasing 'excitement' that keeps me in my profession and the quest for 'excellence' comes naturally when you're excited about what you are doing. The moment things are non-exciting for me; I'd start looking for something completely different.

...and I've a solid live example of proving that it's the 'excitement' that makes things happen. If you are not excited about learning to play guitar - you will never invest the time and effort it takes to even pick up your first tune. I've seen a lot of 'Mega Death' t-shirt wearing engineering grads wanting to 'master the guitar' in 15 days before their performance. They quit in not more than 3 days. It's the 'excitement' that makes the guitar learners stay late and "play it till their fingers bleed" - and I'm not even talking about excellence in playing guitar - I'm talking about just getting your first song right on the Guitar. Excellence is this effort x 10 times carried over decades. I'm not exaggerating.

Most people dont' run after excellence. For them, their job is a 'way of life'. For a lot of people the 'excitement' factor in their jobs is missing. They never try to seek it on their own as well. But those aren't the people who'd think about changing their professions every 5 years. They'd rather stick to what they are doing no matter how boring it is for them.

Getting back to the topic : Can you really switch your profession? I believe it's a *lot* harder than said. I won't say it's impossible; but the kind of attitude it takes to go that path is surely 'out of the world'. I've never seen anyone do that, for whatever reasons.

My classmate in chemical engineering did a masters in Chem E and later went to the US and became a cardiac surgeon after studying another gruelling medical course there. Sounds incongruous. However, as another very senior cardiac surgeon put it, cardiac surgeons are glorified plumbers. Actually there is a whole lot of chemical engineering involved in cardiac surgery in terms of blood flow, valves, artificial blood vessels, heat transfer and mass transfer. In that sense perhaps that was not really that strange.

Don't you think the decision depends upon the person:- doing what job, job's pressure and job satisfaction?

Of course, it's a personal decision. But I'm more interested in evaluating the the overall opinion about being in one profession for 5 years and then abandoning it completely to take up a new one and then repeating the cycle.

I want to read more replies here. 😀