“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
- Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
I’ve always loved that quote, but I don’t think he took it quite far enough. Let’s try again:
“A human being should be able to make six figures online, write an enthralling novel, design a relational database, mix a perfect margarita, calculate a stock’s annualized return, juggle five balls in the lotus position, nail every shift point in a drag race, throw a murderous left hook, solve Rubik’s Cube while discussing the latest tax laws, do heavy squats without a back brace, stand with their legs straight and touch their palms to the floor, identify a stranger’s Myers-Briggs type, separate fact from fiction in the law of attraction, make a baby feel safe, make a child laugh, make an elderly person feel respected, and be the guy everyone wants to be, or the girl everyone wants to be with. Specialization is for insects.”
That’s better!
In 11th grade, I took a class called American Civilization, which was English and history combined. Officially, my schedule showed that I had English class with one teacher, followed by history class with another teacher. But the two classrooms were right next to each other, so they took down the divider and made it into one big classroom. Both teachers taught both subjects, blending them together as if they were the same thing.
The idea was that you can’t fully understand literature without understanding the history of the time it was written. And history doesn’t come alive until you read the literature from that time. The teachers said it really didn’t make any sense to separate these subjects. In college, I remember thinking that if I became a professor, I’d like to teach a class that combined differential equations and art history, because I didn’t see any reason to separate them.
What other things does it make sense to mix? When is generalization a better idea than specialization?
Before we get into this, let’s acknowledge that this is a really huge question, and a complete answer could easily fill a book. For one thing, where do you draw the line between specialization and generalization?
Is Jack Bauer a specialist? He’s really good at catching bad guys, and it’s hard to imagine him in any other job. But when it comes to that job, he brings the full package. He’s a weapons expert, unarmed combat expert, interrogation expert, and operations expert. He’s the best field agent, the best tactical leader, and he was director of CTU. He easily goes undercover with criminal overlords, and somehow forms a personal relationship with every U.S. president (well, except for the evil one).
When the bad guys are trying to beat information out of him, he doesn’t have the luxury of saying “Sorry, but withstanding torture isn’t really my thing. Let me get the guy who does that.” He needs to be CTU’s one-stop shop for all their counter-terrorist needs. Whatever the job, he gets it done. The only thing he really can’t do is computer hacking, but he effectively outsources that to Chloe O’Brian, a specialist. (Or is she?)
I was talking to spiritual coach Akemi Gaines about this, and Henry Ford was one of the names that came up. I called him a specialist, and Akemi said:
“I don’t think Henry Ford is a specialist. Sure, he knew a lot about automobile, but what his greatness is that he gathered people (specialists) and made a modern assembly line style manufacturing company. He is well known for what he said in the trial (!) � ‘I don’t know the answer for that, but I can get someone who does.’ (something like that).”
I agree about what his greatness was, but I didn’t consider his specialty to be the automobile. For all I know, he didn’t know what a steering wheel was. I considered his specialty to be leadership in manufacturing. So depending on how you look at him, you could see either a specialist or a generalist. Was Einstein a specialist because he just did physics, or the ultimate generalist because he worked on a theory to explain the entire universe?
Furthermore, isn’t it possible to wear different hats at different times? Can’t you be a great web designer to one set of customers, a great travel agent to a different set, and a great spouse to someone else?
Anyway, specialization vs. generalization is a really big topic, but I can tackle part of it with a few posts. In this post, I’m going to come off as pro-generalist. Next time, I’ll be pro-specialist. (Does that style count as specialization or generalization?)
Can you combine seemingly unrelated career paths? Sure, why not? See if you can identify these people who eschewed specialization. Surely they were complete failures in the eyes of society, if they couldn’t even pick a niche.
Nicheless man #1: His tombstone lists what he considered his three greatest achievements, and being President of the United States didn’t make the cut. He was a distinguished architect, naturalist, linguist, horticulturist, statesman, archaeologist, and inventor.
Nicheless man #2: Although most of his work was in the field of Bible interpretation, he made tremendous contributions to many branches of science. In fact, he wrote one of the most influential books in the history of science, and invented calculus.
Nicheless man #3: He was an architect, poet, and engineer, but you don’t know him for these things. He created some of the most famous paintings in history, despite having a low opinion of painting. He’s mainly known for something else today. While still alive, he was called Il Divino, meaning “the divine one.”
Did you identify these nicheless slackers? They’re Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Newton, and Michelangelo. Boy, imagine what Isaac Newton could have accomplished, if only he had stuck with Bible study!
Now let’s look at the archetypal Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci. He was a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, and writer, among other things. How many short-sighted people do you think told him to pick a niche and stick with it?
If he had stuck with one thing, he might have been a little better at that thing, but much of his talent would have been wasted. Should he have advanced the field of hydrodynamics a bit further, at the cost of not painting the Mona Lisa? Ridiculous.
Much of his ability must have come from natural talent. Much of it came from his apprenticeship to Andrea del Verrocchio starting at age 14, where he learned drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics, carpentry, drawing, painting, sculpting, and modeling.
But another part of it was his ability to learn holistically, and transfer skills from one discipline to another instead of treating them separately. For example, his paintings the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Virgin of the Rocks are considered masterpieces not just because of his artistic techniques, but because of his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany, geology, and the way people show emotion.
This is a critical point, because you don’t have time to learn everything from scratch. Details will vary, but principles stay the same. Master the principles, and the details will surrender themselves to you.
Steve Pavlina claims that all successful personal growth efforts come down to bringing yourself into greater alignment with just three core principles: truth, love, and power. He makes his articles interesting by finding common threads between personal development and seemingly unrelated topics, such as software, chess, or Star Trek.
In The Joy of Solving Problems, he describes a technique he used to solve a problem without having extensive knowledge in that field:
“One morning my physics teacher walked up to me at my locker before school and asked me to step inside his classroom. He presented me with a physics problem that he couldn’t seem to solve. I solved it easily, not because I was better than him at physics but because I’d been exposed to such an enormous variety of problems that my mind just saw the solution. That physics problem fit the pattern of a class of problems I already knew how to solve. My solution was unusual for a physics problem, but it wasn’t that unusual for a math problem�It was only later in life that I realized how helpful it is to generalize this attitude beyond math, science, and logic problems and into the realm of practical daily existence.”
In my high school chemistry class, our teacher gave us a problem and forgot to give us the relevant formula. The person next to me was completely paralyzed without the formula, because he didn’t know what to do other than plug in numbers like a blind gorilla. What did I do? I just used common sense, because the problem was conceptually simple. This strategy won’t always work, but when problems get more complicated, you’d better understand the concept even if you have the formula.
In college physics, I had a really boring teacher with a thick accent that made him very hard to understand, so I rarely went to class. On one test, there was a problem that I had no idea how to solve the way he wanted us to, but I figured it out knowing that physics is big on “conservation of stuff.” Fortunately I didn’t have to show how I arrived at the answer, and this wouldn’t always work. But when you know the principles, you’re that much more effective when you study the details.
Back when the computer game Doom was all the rage for its immersive 3D graphics, my friend saw me having a good time with it, and wanted to play. She did not have a good time with it. She couldn’t find her way out of mazes, she overlooked important items in the rooms, she didn’t see the monsters sneaking up on her, and she couldn’t use the space around her to dodge enemy blasts while staying focused on her target. As Marty McFly might say, she had a problem thinking 3rd dimensionally.
When we tried another similar game, she wondered why I picked it up right away, while she struggled again. It was because I had developed a general skill that she hadn’t: spatial perception. After learning that skill, I could apply it to any of these games. I can also apply it to a wide array of other situations, from juggling to geometric constructions to sweeping a building for terrorists (which hopefully I’ll never have to do). It’s all the same.
Conversely, I was very ineffective at a number of tasks she excelled at, because she had learned one general skill that I hadn’t: networking. Because she was good at that, she could easily drum up support for any cause, acquire business contacts, and get invited to things other people couldn’t. It’s all the same.
Recently I’ve heard a few people say that Tim Ferriss is all over the place in his range of topics. This surprised me, because I thought he had a pretty clear focus. He’s the 4-Hour Workweek guy. He’s the lifestyle design guy. (And if they think he’s all over the place, then they must think I choose topics with a random number generator!)
Skellie clarified this in Escaping Niches, a really nice post, although I disagree with this particular part. She said that Tim’s blog “jumps all over the place, from road-testing supercars to extreme weight loss to travel tips to nutritional science. The range of topics is so broad that no one person could be interested in all of them.”
I just don’t see it that way. Someone who ends up at his blog after a Google search for the Audi R8 might not be interested in extreme weight loss. But Tim’s not writing for people who want to look up the horsepower of the Audi R8. He’s writing for people who are interested in what he’s all about – deconstructing, streamlining, and remapping any challenge. His ideal reader won’t mind that he doesn’t stay on the same narrow topic. Like me, they might not even notice.
I’ll point you to two great posts about generalization, which dispel the “jack of all trades, master of none” myth. First, Tim’s post The Top 5 Reasons to Be a Jack of All Trades. He has some great points about the superior success and life enjoyment of the generalist. For example, what do you call the top military guys? Generals! This is also where I came across one of my favorite phrases: “Be too complex to categorize.”
The other is Michael Martine’s Hiring Help for Your Blog – Why a Generalist is the Way to Go. It might not perfectly reflect the services he offers today (click his Blog Coaching and Consulting link for details), but it’s a fantastic explanation of why you don’t want to hire a guy who won the Nobel Prize for CSS without knowing a thing about SEO.
Mike at Four Pillars gave me some blogging advice the other day, in response to I Am Part Time Blogger, Hear Me Meow:
“Anyway, the reason your blog isn’t more successful in terms of RSS is quite simple (yes, I know the answer). Your posts are not main stream enough – you don’t talk about everyday, common items which most of the blogosphere can relate to. Your posts are all over the map in terms of topics, you write about confusing concepts and ideas! 
Obviously this is not meant as criticism – it’s just an analysis based on factors that I think popular blogs share. Most of them cover things like saving money, investment, budgeting etc etc but they talk about things like cars, homes, cable bills etc. Most people can relate to those things. If you have a blog that usually covers common topics, has some focus (ie saving money, investing, baby stuff), you are a good writer, can promote the blog and work your ass off then you will probably have fairly successful blog in terms of RSS.”
I kind of agree and kind of disagree. It depends on whether you want to give people what they want, or give them what they need. I agree that niche blogs tend to be the most successful. Most blog readers seem to love them, but I have no idea why. The problem is that they’re often redundant. Most of the examples mentioned here have been done to death already, if there was ever anything to say in the first place.
Saving money? Why does anyone need to read about that? You save money by spending less. That’s all there is to it. Investing? It can potentially be very complicated, but investment blogs usually just tell people what they would already know if they read the newsletter that comes with their 401(k) statement. Budgeting? Yeah, it’s important, but I don’t see how you can get much fresh material on such a simple topic.
Of course, people read blogs for reasons other than getting information. Community, for one. So many of these blogs, even if they don’t really have anything new to say, can still be useful. But I’d rather find new things to say. Even if an exhausted topic can work, it’s not really something we need.
For me, doing a niche blog would be a terrible choice. First, I’d keep having to think up something else to say on that same topic even if there was nothing left to say. Scott Young noted that the purpose of his website is to lose its readers. He said that after you’ve read a blog for a while, “you move on, not because the ideas weren’t great, but because you’ve absorbed them fully enough that there isn’t anything left.”
Darren Rowse found that to be true on ProBlogger, his blog about blogging that’s targeted at beginner and intermediate level bloggers. He said that most of his readers tend to be regulars for a few months, then leave. It’s not because he’s not doing a good job. It’s because he’s doing such a good job that he quickly tells people everything they need to know about that topic. They graduate and move on.
Many times, the blogger gets sick of their own topic. After writing thousands of posts on the same topic, they’ve long since outgrown it, and they want out. Some people seem to think that the ultimate goal is to hand the reins over to someone else, so you can step away. But instead of that, why not create a blog you won’t outgrow, so you never want to step away?
The other problem with niche blogs is that any idea you have that doesn’t happen to fall within the boundaries of your specific topic is wasted. And I’m certainly not going to start a separate blog on every topic I write about. I’d end up with hundreds of blogs with just a few posts each.
Instead, I choose to write about any topic that fits with my general focus. I might have a hard time putting my general focus into words, but it’s there. It’s kind of like Seinfeld – you can say it’s about nothing, but it still has a general focus, and you have some idea of what to expect.
By not restricting myself to a narrow topic, I can write about some things that others can’t, because some things fall outside all of the traditional niches. And because I can switch things up, I don’t have to repeat myself a whole lot. But writing about high-level stuff is very different from combining unrelated niches. A blog about finance and gardening won’t work, because it’s targeting two completely different kinds of people. I’m targeting one kind of person.
Leo Babauta seems to advocate non-niche blogging now, judging from his post Shattering the Myth of Blog Niches: How to Grow a Huge Readership. (Although if I remember correctly, he once attributed his success partly to his unique focus on simple productivity. Can anyone confirm? Oh, and simplicity is another niche that I don’t get. If it’s so simple, why do you need to write thousands of posts about it?)
Now don’t go crazy with generalization, thinking that specialization is for suckers. I’ve got one or two posts coming about the benefits of specialization. Subscribe now, and don’t miss them!
But generalization is seriously underrated. Just ask Benjamin Franklin, Galileo Galilei, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gottfried Leibniz, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Archimedes, Cicero, John von Neumann, and countless other people who refused to be a job title, and insisted on being too complex to categorize.
I think Tim Ferriss has the second-best answer to the question “What do you do?” He sometimes just says “I’m a drug dealer” to end the conversation, because it takes too long to explain everything to someone who’s probably just making chit chat.
The best answer would be what escaped mental patient Billy Caufield said in The Dream Team: “What do I do? Well, it kinda depends on the circumstances.”
