Depth or Breadth?
This question of concentration versus diversification is one I find myself returning to often.
As a competitive person, dealing with the stupidly obvious yet harsh reality that, “You cannot do everything” is a painful one to contend with. For better or worse, my default mode is to always push for more: faster, heavier, smarter, bigger, better…always more. Of course, the challenge is that the pursuit of marginal improvements in one vertical demands sacrifice in others. Hence, the recurring question: Should I pursue depth or breadth?
The arguments for depth are strong.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book, “Outliers: The Story of Success'', Gladwell outlines what he calls the 10,000 Hour Rule. This (now well-known) principle states that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of deliberate, intense practice to achieve mastery in a given domain. In short, “Outlier” success demands outlier dedication.
If the goal is to be THE Best in one’s domain, depth seems like the obvious choice.
To be the best at anything: chess, sprinting, comedy, jiu jitsu, whatever, requires an obsessive level of dedication. I think of the GOAT-status athletes: Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, Tom Brady. At the very very top, having “exceptional talent” is a given. When you’re playing a game of inches, it’s almost always the volume and intensity of one’s work ethic that are the determining factors. [1]
In a globalized world, the payoffs to being the very best have never been greater. The retired Jamaican sprinter, Usain Bolt, holds the record for the fastest 100 meter dash with a time of 9.58 seconds. Behind Bolt is American sprinter Tyson Gay with a time of 9.69 seconds. Just a tenth of a second separates the two, yet Bolt gets all the glory. Bolt is a household name globally while Gay is an unfamiliar one, even in his home country.
One fascinating aspect of market economies is that as they grow, specialization becomes increasingly valuable. If you’re stuck on an island with 5 people, a computer science PHD is of no value (even if you have a functioning PC on the island). If you live in a society with hundreds of millions of people, however, it’s a very different story. With the internet massively increasing the world’s interconnectedness, the payoffs to specialization have never been so great.
With all this said, there are still incredibly compelling arguments for breadth.
In 2019, investigative reporter David Epstein published his book, “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World”. In it, Epstein introduces a counterpoint to Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule proposing that in a world with what he calls, “wicked problems” - that is, complex problems that are difficult to solve due to incomplete information or evolving dynamics - having a diverse skill set rather than a narrow one is actually more valuable.
Navigating this game we call life is a “wicked” type of problem. The rules. The objectives. The Relationships. In life, these things are not well-defined like they are in man-made competition. Epstein would argue that a generalist’s skill set (rather than a specialist’s) is actually better equipped to navigate our unpredictable world.
There’s another advantage to pursuing breadth that I don’t think gets enough attention. It has to do with risk and fragility.
Humans are status-seeking creatures. When presented with a set of domains to operate within, we gravitate towards those we have competency in. For a specialist, perhaps they’re in the top percentile of their field but in all other domains they’re just average. To me, this approach to life feels fragile and risky. Fragile in the sense that their status is tied to a single domain. Move outside of it, and they often find themselves lost and insecure. It’s risky in that experiencing an adverse event that would for some reason prohibit them from operating within that domain, would be catastrophic. Generalists don’t have this problem. [2]
I think about the NBA and NFL prospects who were expected to be superstars upon entering their respective leagues. For those that sadly failed to live up to these expectations, or even worse experienced career-ending injuries, their investment in their sport has effectively been deemed useless. Further, they’ve now been thrown into the real world - a world they are almost certainly under-prepared for. Pursuing depth and depth alone is risky business.
For me, the question of depth was never one of exclusive focus in a single domain. I don’t necessarily care about being the absolute best. Instead, it’s always been, given the handful of domains that I’m interested in (psychology, economics, entrepreneurship, fitness, etc), how should I most effectively allocate my time across them?
Curiosity can be both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it energizes one to engage with the world in different ways and, in the process, it makes for a richer life. But, when left unchecked, succumbing to the whims of one’s curiosity can pull you in so many different directions that you never actually make real progress in anything.
For me, a diversified approach to life rather than a hyper-specialized one is most intriguing. I’d caveat this, however, by saying that the description “Jack of all trades, master of none” is an unattractive one. Instead, the life of a Polymath - one who is greatly knowledgeable across a handful of topics and can pull on his latticework of knowledge to solve complex problems - is much more in line with the kind of life I hope I can pursue.
Aside from all the mental calculus involved in deciding between greater depth or breadth, perhaps the determining factor should always be what would make for a richer life for you. While perhaps in opposition to the financial incentives, for me, the variety that life has to offer and the richness that it brings is far too enticing to be confined by a life of hyper-specialization.
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[1] To see just how true this is, I wish there were standardized data that accurately measured the time and intensity of training across professional athletes. It would be fascinating to see Michael Jordan’s statistics compared to Magic, Bird, and the other all-time greats.
[2] I’ve been reading “Fooled by Randomness” by Taleb recently and this issue of “blow up” risk has been on my mind lately.
