Is it Better to Know a Little about A Lot or A Lot about A Little?

The school system in America opts for the latter the majority of the time. Even as soon as middle school, I remember having to give up electives that I loved, to pursue the things that were more likely to put me ‘ahead’. And god forbid you show a proclivity for something early on. America loves kid geniuses and prodigies and precocity is valued above all else.

In college, the brochures and the tours encourage you to explore different paths, but the reality is that if you don’t declare your major by your sophomore year, you’re at major risk of falling behind and having to spend more money (that you probably don’t have), to finish a degree. Then you go into the workforce and you have to spend ten years doing something (perhaps unrelated to your degree) before you can even attempt to call yourself an expert.

There is special emphasis in accomplishing this expertise goal as early as possible. We devour tales about child talents, and revere early success stories like Mark Zuckerberg. We all want to reach our imaginary goal as fast as possible and believe that the way to get there first is to pick something to be good at first.

We will call this route the specialization route. The specialization route is where your whole life revolves around finding something you show an ounce of aptitude for and optimizing to be as good as possible in that one area.

But there is another path - the generalist route. This route involves sampling many different paths and pursuing shorter term goals. Instead of settling on a sport when you’re eight, you may try different ones all the way through high school. Instead of settling on the first musical instrument you try, maybe you try three or four. Instead of settling on one career path, you pivot every two or three years. This path most likely means that you won’t specialize early and you probably won’t be in Forbes 30 under 30, but it may mean that your long term happiness and success is much more likely.

Recently I read the book “Range” by David Epstein that explains this generalist route in more detail and it got me thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of each path. The book opens with a story comparing Tiger Woods and Roger Federer, arguably two of the greatest athletes in the current generation. Woods specialized extremely early in life, starting golf as a toddler and rapidly rising through the ranks. His development story is well known because we love a child prodigy. Federer, on the other hand, played many sports including tennis, and didn’t give up the other sports exclusively for tennis until his late teen years, even though he showed early talent for tennis as well. So even though Federer started later, he was still able to achieve massive success in his sport.

There have been many studies that postulate that early specialization and development of expertise lead to greater success in a chosen field. However, the generalist approach also works, and it works more often, it just doesn’t get as much media because it doesn’t involve a genius child or early success. Nowadays, parents want their children to skip the sampling period and get straight to specialization so they can get ahead, and can be as successful as possible - as early as possible. The ultimate fear is that their child will fall behind. While this approach often comes from a good place, it’s just too hard to guarantee that what a kid is good at when they’re five is what they’ll be good at forever. And even more importantly it’s near impossible to guarantee that it will make them happy. 

The other critique of the specialist approach is that there isn’t as much of a need for it anymore. For example, how many experts do we need in quantum theory? Maybe at one point, we needed many because the information was hard to come by. They know a lot about a specific area. But nowadays? Everyone has access to every piece of information ever published on their phone in seconds. You can see how ‘experts’ in a field would quickly become repetitive in this environment.

What is increasingly important in today’s society is the ability to think broadly and across disciplines to connect and execute novel ideas, or knowing a little about a lot. This is what the generalist path could provide. Generalists may have some concentrated interests, but they continue to sample different paths and pursue shorter term goals throughout their lives. With each path they pursue, they learn a little bit about that field or skill. The more productive knowledge they have in more areas, the more likely they are to be able to find solutions and connections that specialists won’t. 

This article isn’t meant to pit generalists and specialists against each other or to argue that one is better, because BOTH are absolutely necessary in society. We need specialists to have a depth of knowledge in their field, and we need generalists to connect the dots in between verticals of specialization. For example, I would want my surgeon to be a specialist in medicine, but I would prefer generalist business leaders who can draw on a wide range of experiences to make decisions.

I wanted to write about this idea because I have long felt inadequate due to my lack of specialization. I have experienced enormous jealousy towards friends and family who did have something they wanted to specialize in. I feel like I am failing a lot of the time because I change my mind, switch goals, and pursue hobbies and interests that are completely unrelated to my current trajectory.

But turns out, maybe that’s my path. Maybe I’m more suited to trying out many different things, gaining enough knowledge to feel comfortable, and then moving on. I like connecting the dots and executing on new ideas, and if you’re in the same boat, then I wanted you to know that you’re not behind or failing either, society has just buried the importance of generalists under a hyper-specialized world. 

Sunset hike in Zion National Park; Any kind of travel makes you realize how much you don’t know