Chapter 63: The Desire To Be Everything

I've always wanted to do, be, and experience as much as I could.

Not in a greedy way, but in a curious way.

I want to understand people, the world, myself, ideas, creativity. To explore new places, to build businesses, to make beautiful things, and to see what my body is capable of.

Yet, I wrestle with this.

I see people who pick one thing, stay with it for a decade, and achieve incredible things.

Part of me wonders if I'm making life harder than it needs to be.

But I don't think this urge is a flaw. This urge to do it all, to contain multitudes, is deeply human.

And lucky us, we're living through a time period where acting on it has never been more possible.

The Situation 

The world is changing faster than you or I can can fully process.

And the general sentiment, at least in corners of the internet, is that the window to "make it" in the traditional sense is closing.

I read a viral article this week from the CEO of an AI company.

He wrote:

"I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job. I describe what I want built, in plain English, and it just... appears. Not a rough draft I need to fix. The finished thing. I tell the AI what I want, walk away from my computer for four hours, and come back to find the work done. Done well, done better than I would have done it myself, with no corrections needed."

He wasn't writing this to brag. He was writing it to warn people outside of tech: this is not a someday thing. It is happening now.

The AI is creating itself and replacing the work of highly skilled people. 

While it was meant to be a stark wake up call to those ignoring the massive societal shift that is occurring, it was also meant to inspire those with agency. 

Agency as in, the ability to direct oneself to achieve one's goals.

Because if the tools can do the work, the question becomes: who is deciding what work to do? 

That's where humans still matter. That's where you still matter.

You see those who are already doing it.

The 22-year-old non-technical founder who built a $30M/year mobile app business.

The 25-year-old with millions of followers who is traveling around the world meeting his idols.

And yet, when you see people activating their agency, it triggers pressure. You start to feel like you’re behind, and that the window is closing. 

Not just "what should I do with my life?" but "do I even have time to figure it out before the rules change forever?”

The desire to be everything collides with the fear that you're already out of time.

A Personal Story

I've felt this myself.

At the beginning of last year, I moved across the world and went all-in on my own projects.

I saw the tectonic shifts coming, or thought I did, and I wanted to be positioned before the wave hit.

And then I arrived in the unknown. And it was paralyzing.

The problem was not a lack of options. The problem was infinite options. 

I could build an app. Start an agency. Consult. Write. Create content. Every door was open. Every path seemed viable.

Because when you can do anything and you want to be everything, choosing becomes impossible.

I spent months stuck in what I'll call the "which door" trap. Trying to pick a lane. Switching lanes. Feeling behind because I was half in on multiple things. Waiting for clarity, for one path to light up and announce itself as the path.

(Spoiler, that never happened.)

The answer I was looking for didn't arrive as a single illuminated path. It arrived when I stopped trying to choose between the things I already was.

The answer was not to pick between thinker and doer, or philosopher and builder, or creator and operator.

The answer was to merge them.

We've been taught that these are opposing camps. 

You're either the visionary or the executor. The dreamer or the doer. The big-picture person or the details person.

But if you look around, those divisions are collapsing.

Job titles are merging. "Designer" and "engineer" become "design engineer." 

Creators are founding companies. Coders are building massive audiences online.

The tools now allow one person to operate across boundaries that used to require teams.

AI is accelerating this. It is collapsing the gap between idea and execution.

Which means the bottleneck is no longer skill. It is vision, taste, and the willingness to act.

The people who will thrive are not the specialists who go deeper into one silo.

And they are not the generalists who spread themselves so thin they're effective at nothing.

They are the ones who integrate. Who can see the whole and build the parts. Who don't need permission to solve problems, because they can think and execute on their own.

Aka those who embrace the modern day renaissance archetype.

As Da Vinci said, “To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”

The same principle applies now.

As AI accelerates, the most adaptive people will not be the ones who burrow into a single silo. 

They will be the ones who can move across silos. Who can see patterns that specialists miss. Who can translate between domains and build at the intersections.

Specialists get trapped. Generalists get lost. The modern renaissance man (and woman) integrates. And that's where the leverage lives.

Closing Thoughts

To be direct — I don't know how this all plays out. Nobody does.

I'm making predictions based on my research, my experience, and my own thinking. 

I could be wrong. AI might decide humans are unnecessary in five years. The whole world might change in ways none of us can anticipate.

But I have no control over that.

However, what I do have control over is how I spend my time right now. And I've decided to spend it pursuing what excites me most. Creating, sharing ideas, building, and helping others do the same.

Because even if the world shifts beneath us, the desire to be everything doesn't go away. The need to create, to think, to build. That’s human.

I've spent the last year building my life around this thesis. Content, offers, systems, fulfillment, and documenting it all online. 

Not because I have it all figured out, but because this is what I want to be doing, regardless of what comes next.

After helping 35+ founders and brands with content, and building my own one-person business alongside it, I now feel ready to help others do the same.

Starting in late March, I'll be taking on a handful of people to build alongside me. A 1:1 experience over 3 to 6 months.

We'll build your one-person business from the ground up. Everything I've learned over the past year, condensed and applied to your situation. I'm keeping this extremely small so I can spend serious time with each person and get them outsized results.

If you've felt the desire to be everything, you have a skillset to build around, and you're ready to set yourself up for a future of freedom, leverage, and creativity, you can fill out this application to see if you're a fit.

— Dodds