Breadth versus Depth: Key Considerations for Focusing or Diversifying in Your Career

Of all the advice that is dispensed in academia, one of the most varied is about whether you should focus narrowly and deeply, or diversify and broaden your repertoire.

The reason for this variety of suggested approach is of course, circumstance and the individual: the ecosystem you find yourself in, and your personal aspirations, risk appetite and other factors determine what is "best for you".

So this video is definitely not to suggest what you should do: rather to raise awareness of some key factors that might affect your approach.

Some of these factors include:

💎 the combination of latency and low acceptance rates in many core activities - in academia being applying for grants and submitting publications - leading to volatility: one of the "management" strategies here is to do a lot more than you actually expect to get...

💎 your capacity for learning and improvement and hitting potential plateaus if focussing narrowly on just one thing - where you learn especially quickly but may eventually hit capacity / capability limits, versus doing a range of activities where you're continually learning and seeing good improvements because you're in an earlier part of the expertise spectrum

💎 having refuge activities to switch to if one of your activities is going badly, allowing you to recharge and come back to it later refreshed. Even if you work super hard and do everything right focusing on just-one-thing, it can go bad for all sorts of reasons beyond your control...

💎 the expectations of those who fund or resource you - sometimes they won't be keen for you to hyperspecialize, preferring a range of contributory activities (e.g. a typical academics' teaching, research and service split)

💎 personal preferences and attention span / comfort focusing deeply on one narrow thing versus lots of things

💎 diversity of activities, especially including *new* activities, provides you with the opportunity to discover new things that you are passionate about, and good at (ideally both together!)

💎 110% effort opportunities where, as long as you go in with eyes open, you commit fully to just one thing, in order to maximize chances of success - perhaps leaving academia to do a startup

Check out the podcast here, or the video version here: https://youtu.be/53J0dcI03gk