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Jack-of-all-Trades

In the previous article, I have outlined the multiple intelligences and the fact that I am well-equipped in all areas except for interpersonal. This is the right place for a little excursion: for an outsider it may seem as if I would brag with my abilities, but you can believe it or not: My life would be much, much easier if "normal" would be an option. I got such an awkward combination of factors that puts my chances of meeting a similar person on the street dangerously close to zero. Therefore, this is further away from bragging than one can imagine - rather a call for a self-help group of anonymous multigenies or something.

This is also the right keyword, because genius and excellence are not part of my profession. There are always people to find who can do more and better in every area. Even with an IQ of 140 there is among 500 people someone else who has the same (that is not really rare) and I do not believe my value is so high. But let's take a look at what we've already had: INTJ, Introverted Intuition, Enneagram 5/1, and a broad multiple intelligence. If we let that simmering forty years, this gives a strong soup. Driven by Ni, one constantly sucks in information, across all subject areas, always looking for new input. If you want to do something, then you just do it . There are, of course, preferences - if the logical-mathematical side is so strong, one is drawn to deterministic systems.

I wanted a web-based order and assembly management? First I learned what PHP is and then programmed such a thing. And when the complaint came, "we don't have a net everywhere", I learned Android (someone remembering The Matrix: "We can load everything ..."?) and programmed an app which can be used offline and synchronizes itself with the net. IT infrastructure for my (small) company? Did it, including assembling the server. The manufacturer of our heating system has claimed that what our installer built doesn't work properly. I got a Raspberry Pi, designed and soldered an interface board with 16 operational amplifier stages, and can now in real-time monitor all possible temperatures in the system, including a webcam for the chip chamber. Of course the path is often stony and hard ( Nothing is ever easy is my favorite quote from Terry Goodkind in the Sword of Truth ) and in the project I hit pretty much any bump available for the newbie. Who knows that the breakdown voltage of diodes depends very much on the ambient temperature and voltage converters have a much too big ripple frequency if one wants to measure voltages in the millivolt range? Now I know this of course ...

I wanted a boiler for my model steam locomotive, so I bought a TIG device and welded the thing. Turning, painting, walls, laying tiles ... if the technical understanding is there and the kinaesthetic intelligence is there for the motor skills, then you can do practically all the craftwork. The special thing about Ni is the synergy effect - if you are already a machining technician and a programmer, then it is easy to combine both and convert the lathe to CNC and also write an auxiliary application for thread cutting.

At a young age, my belief in an open world was even greater and my musical ambitions stronger, back then I wrote a concerto for piano and orchestra with a score thick as a book (1st / 2nd / 3rd movement). This whole blog is a sign that the linguistic intelligence is there - and this in combination with IQ: I had an episode with a lawsuit which should actually lead to an European Court of Justice decision, but was then strangled at the German supreme court, after I had written the whole correspondence in the typical speech and my lawyer only signed everything because it is not allowed to do it yourself. Now painting was never my strength, but the visual-spatial imagination is already there and if you have the technical understanding for it, then you are going to be a photographer: my photostream on Flickr. And this whole self-reflection is an expression of the intrapersonal intelligence. The best expression for kinesthetic intelligence is for me rock climbing, since there movement has a very important role as you need unusual movements and I never had great problems with it. Power yes, but that is a matter of stature and training.

Not that I had done a top performance on any of these fields - there were people who could do it better - but I've always been good enough. The problem is, however, that precisely here in Germany the concept of a Jack-of-all-Trades is not recognized at all. If you want to make something official here, you have to make examinations and trainings to get a beautiful stamp sheet of paper which tells you can do it. But because time is money, the results that you can buy from others are often worse than what you can do yourself with enough time. I need longer, but my solutions work just as well. It is an annoyance that I cannot do much offically.

A nice example:
Someone working on the house installation it has shot the control electronics of our elevator. Technician #1 did not find the error and technician #2 said that the control board had to be replaced. For that they have already used hours and accordingly hundreds of euro cash. I knew from my electronics excursions that the 78xx voltage transformers are sensitive to reversing voltage, like with a power failure at the front and capacitors at the rear so that the voltage at the output is higher than at the input. Why should it not apply to this board too? After an hour I had identified the voltage transformer and could have simply soldered it out, generate the voltage externally and then the thing would have run again, only that would have been highly illegal. If you are not an approved elevator manufacturer electronics technican, you can only touch the electronics and as a non-certified elevator technician you aren't allowed even that. So what I could have fixed with 100 euros, then officially approved and audited cost 4,000.

On the one hand, it is extremely practical to be able to solve more or less all deterministically solvable problems if you invest enough time. On the other hand, however, this also isolates you from the less talented fellow human beings so that you really feel like a forgotten alien. A few weeks ago three of my employees in a joint effort did not manage to log in with user name and password on Windows10, just because I had forgotten after an admin session to log in with their user names that the user name is already preselected, then my thought was - are they so stupid or am I so different?

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So sehr ich ja ein Fan der Persönlichkeitspsychologie und des MBTI-Modells bin, so ist mir auch genauso klar was es alles nicht erklären kann. Klar, vieles hängt wirklich von unserem Persönlichkeitstyp ab und Menschen mit dem gleichen Typ sehen sich mit ä

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