It can be difficult to balance the presumed prudence of digging deep into a particular field, a particular topic or profession, with the desire to explore more widely; to dabble in other realms of inquiry and to invest portions of your time and energy in a rudimentary understanding, therein.
Part of the reason for the seeming dichotomy between these two endeavors can be found in the shape society took post Industrial Revolution, and even more so post-WWII.
Specialization emerged as a possibility after the development of agriculture, but was refined with the emergence of technologies like the steam engine and textile mill.
That trend toward specialization was further processed and purified after the Second Great War as a result of the refocus on both corporate-style employment and social services. Our businesses were growing like never before and required certain types of education to continue expanding. Public primary schooling followed by secondary education became the norm, became the de facto conveyor belt upon which human beings were transported from adolescence to cubicle to retirement.
This isn’t a value-judgement about that particular combination of historical and technological elements. It’s a reality that brought with it both positives and negatives, socially and individually. Many of the wonderful things we take for granted in the modern world are the consequence of this system, but so, too, are many of our modern ills. Which is something we could probably say about any movement or technology that makes any kind of wave.
On the cultural level, though, this historical circumstance has led to a large number of truisms that indicate we should all choose one thing and specialize in that one thing. Forever. It’s insane not to, we may have been told as kids, because if we don’t specialize, we won’t be good enough at anything to become expert in it, and as a result our knowledge will be outshone by that of our competitors. We’ll never be professionally successful.
The counterargument to this prevailing wisdom is that, actually, becoming multidisciplinary has benefits, both in terms of happiness and in terms of expertise.
If everyone who becomes a cardiac specialist receives the same education, and they all work super-hard to become the best possible cardiac specialists they can be, then we’ll end up with a very siloed specialty that ceases to grow—and one in which the resident experts are blind to the world outside their textbook knowledge.
If folks studying cardiac medicine take the time to explore and engage with other fields, like programming and oil painting and engineering and civics and absolutely anything else, however, they bring the benefits of cross-pollination into the field. Innovations tend to emerge from this sort of relationship, while a more focused attention tends to be limited to iterative growth. A broad, multi-experiential education, then, may be preferable to a more mono-focused one.
This latter argument, however, is still burdened by that long-held bias against being a ‘jack of all trades, master of none.’ The implication is that by educationally spreading yourself around, you’re unable to fully invest yourself in any one thing.
And that’s true, to a degree. If you educate two people of vaguely equal capability in different ways, with one focusing 100% of their attention on cardiac medicine, and the other spending 60% of their time on the same, you’ll end up with differing levels of cardiac medicine ability; at least in the short-term.
But over time, the diminishing returns associated with mono-focus will catch up with that first student: they’ll achieve less growth for every unit of effort invested in their education.
If they acquire half of all the knowledge they might possibly know about the subject within their first five years of school, after that, each 1% might take twice as long. After they acquire 70% of the total knowledge they could acquire, each new 1% might take four times as long, and so on. Once they reach 80%, they’re likely old enough that working at the same rate as before becomes impossible, and the educational machinery slows down for them. This growth curve gets steeper and steeper, leaving us with a sort of Zeno’s Paradox of learning.
Someone who grazes more broadly, however, has the opportunity to accumulate massive gains across a variety of subjects, reaching that 50% knowledge mark across many fields, and then continuing that focus in some areas while also investing in other, easier wins. Which in practice means that they continue to move along that progressively more difficult path, perhaps in several fields of study, but they also flesh out their rounder body of knowledge, benefiting from the possibility of cross-pollination along the way. They will still reach that point of steep diminishing returns in fields they work on for longer periods of time, but at some point they’ll more or less catch up with the other student. The main difference is that they’ll also have this expansive library of other knowledge to draw upon. Which is useful unto itself, but it also gives them an asymmetric advantage in achieving vertical leaps in that realm of primary focus.
All of which is to say that slow, steady, iterative growth is a very beneficial and desirable thing. So beneficial and desirable that, I would argue, it’s worth doing in several fields, if you can find enough fields that interest you. Learning to face and persevere upon that ever-slowing growth curve is a valuable exercise that is worth one’s time.
Similarly, learning to expand one’s horizons allows for more consistent and much faster growth in a wide range of fields. It means you’ll be capable of exploring like a kindergartner: everything new and shiny, vital knowledge just sitting there waiting to be picked up by passersby. It still requires discipline and dedication, but it’s at a different place on that hockey stick effort curve that eventually spans out into infinite. Exploring widely allows you to soak up a lot, quickly. But until you dig deeper, the knowledge gained will be more broad than deep.
Combining these two paths, then, allows a person to enjoy the best of both.
I like to think about the combination of these two perspectives as a painting.
Picture a bogglingly complex and detailed landscape painting: one that you can step back and take in all at once, to see the broad movements, the immense number of mini-scenes taking places across its expanse, but to which you can step up very close to see the brushstrokes, the dots, the individual grains of pigments.
The isolated scenes are different realms of inquiry, while the painting, a landscape, also serves as a portrait. It shows the chaotic bits of knowledge, the mishmash of skills and know-how that you’ve picked up over the years.
Viewed from a distance, this landscape reads like a caricature, with only the most dense portions standing out, serving as a rough outline, a basic conception of who you are.
Zoom in, though, and you can see the details. The bits of blue and purple that make up the shadows that previously seemed to be black and gray. The innocuous outlines that balance the larger composition when read from a distance.
These details, these smaller bits, add up to that emergent whole: that bigger you. And as such, those bits are worth cultivating; are worth investigation and investment. More bits, better applied, equals a more cohesive and coherent portrait.
Keep the rest of the painting in mind when you’re applying small daubs, using a single sable hair and a microscope. And then, when you’re ready, step back and view the big picture again.
That smaller piece is now a solid foundation, an anchor, for the rest of your painting. Allow yourself to make broad, compositional adjustments. Embrace the holistic work and the tight framing with equal enthusiasm, as both are important and play a role in your development.
Perhaps it will make sense to spend most of your life zoomed in on one little patch down in the corner.
Perhaps you’ll spend most of your life working on the broader strokes, the overall composition.
Maybe you’ll bounce back and forth between two primary, favorite areas, and perhaps you’ll find several dozen that are worth your time and attention.
Being capable of framing and reframing your educational priorities allows you to benefit from true expertise, to deep-dive into a particular subject matter, while also providing the mental scaffolding to pull back out and shift your focus when you’re keen to broaden your horizons.
This essay was originally published on my Patreon page, where patrons get access to additional essays each month. A huge thanks to those patrons who sponsored this piece.