Generalist vs Specialist?

My struggle continues to find out exactly what I want out of my career. Too many ideas, too many goals.

For a while now my coworker and I have been talking about the struggle of whether we stay at our current job and hope things get better or leave and go on to different adventures. This is something I have been thinking about on and off for almost a year now.

One of the main “pillars” I need to establish for myself are my long term career goals and exactly what I want out of a job. This has proven to be easier said than done. Why?

I believe it is because I have many ideas, many goals, many passions etc. This has always been a struggle for me. I remember in high school when everyone knew what they wanted to major in and where the wanted to go, I was struggling to decide. Again, I had many interests and it took me a while to choose one.

I refuse to believe that having many interests and passions is a bad thing. It is just something I need to keep in mind.

I have always wanted to “move up”, but recently I made the realization that if I move up, my focus will be more narrow. I would be force to focus more on a specific area. Is this what I want?

Yes, I would like to move up, in part, so my voice is heard and I have input on the future of the institute/company I work for. Is that the only reason? And if so, is that enough to fight to move up?

So now the question boils down to if I would rather be a generalist and indulge in many interests or become more specialize and focus on less interests.

To me this is not a simple answer. I have been thinking about it for over a year and it appears there will never be a resolution. I know in the end it will work out, but it is so frustrating in the mean time!