I recently wrote about being a specialist instead of a generalist, and this post delves deeper into that thought. When I was listening to Dave Ramsey’s “The Legacy Journey,” he discussed how he and his wife, Sharon, decided to give to charity. There is no right or wrong way to give to others. I believe that and so does he. But he made a good point, saying if they had one million dollars to give, would their money be more effective giving one dollar to one million charities (essentially, “going wide”) or giving one million dollars to one charity (“going deep”)?
If you “go deep,” your impact is likely to be far greater/more meaningful than if you “go wide.” Again, this is not meant to make it sound like going wide is wrong, per say. In the example above, donating that much money (or any amount of money, time, and energy) is a very noble thing to do. It just depends on what you feel is best. If you have multiple charities that you’d like to give to, by all means, go for it. But if you want them to reach their goals faster, you may have to limit where your resources are going.
So how does this relate to the generalist or the specialist? Well, the generalist is essentially going wide. They may have a little bit of knowledge or experience in a lot of different areas. This is a good thing! It’s almost always a good thing to have more experience and to be well-rounded. You can often connect better with others because you have more to talk about. But if you need an expert or have a specific task that needs to be accomplished? Then the specialist is probably your best bet.
You may have a lot of knowledge in many different areas, but if you don’t have a deep understanding of how to build a rocket (or specific parts for a rocket), you probably won’t be much help to the engineering division of a company like SpaceX. This is why it’s not right or wrong to be a generalist or specialist, to go wide or to go far. It is all situation-dependent and up for you to decide what you want to be or do.
