Breadth vs Depth - A constant battle...

Exploring the tug-of-war between diversifying skills and deepening expertise

Deciding whether to add breadth or depth to my skill set has been a constant battle for me. I think it is very easy to get your head turned by the latest cool thing. Sometimes this is warranted and can pay off big time, but other times it can just be a distraction taking you off course.

I am curious by nature. Often find myself going down various rabbit holes in my learning and usually end up questioning whether or not I should pivot and go all in. Past examples are things like smart contract development, AI or machine learning. I have talked about such things in this blog.

This is something that has always followed me, but become more pronounced after I successfully moved into the crypto space. I started jumping into hackathons, which eventually led to my current boss reaching out and offering me a job. However this has caused me to often think about the next opportunity to pivot, sometimes at the detriment to my current focus.

Recently a friend and I discussed this as he was trying to decide which way his career should go and again I found myself considering my own options. In recent times I have become better at curbing these unwanted thoughts and honing in more on what works best for me.

I have come to realise that you can pursue both pretty well, something which I never really thought was an option before. Will there be trade offs with this approach? Of course there will, but give me any path/situation that doesn't have trade offs? I'll wait...

My own path is now this. Continuously push for depth in my current arena. The simple fact is that this will give me the most bang for my buck:

• It will help me be better at my current job
• Thus allowing me to take more ownership and control in current projects
• Thus allow me to command a higher salary
• And many more

However, this does not mean I can't look to add breadth too. The reality is - as I mentioned - I'm a naturally curious and inquisitive person, I want to play around with stuff, figure things out. And what I have come to realise this is helpful, it actually also helps with my main goal - depth - because there are many transferable skills and even those that aren't obviously transferable still help give fresh perspective and insights.

I used to be locked in the type of thinking that unless we want all in and super deep on something it was useless, but that I now know is obviously not the case. To any of you struggling with something similar I would urge you to do both and go after breadth and depth, if one makes more sense than the other for you it will naturally show itself anyway, so overthinking it often just results in paralysis by indecision. Most of the time things will just figure themselves out and you will have a heavier ratio one way or the other depending on your current work load, interest levels or a multitude of other factors.

The main thing is - just keep doing stuff - it helps you grow and yields positive outcomes in some way, shape or form. If you would like to dig into this a little more let's hop on a call and discuss.