As your mother might have told you: everyone’s good at something, and most people are particularly good at one specific thing. In my opinion it’s good to focus your efforts on one particular thing at a time, be it cutting your toe nails or ensuring that your business prospers. I’ll admit that the two are somewhat different in scale, but the principle is the same — focus on *one thing at a time*, it’s the best way to work.

Take cutting your nails. If I try to eat dinner, read a book and clean the kitchen sink all at the same time I’m liable to drop my book into a dinner-filled sink and spill my toes all over the floor. Not ideal.

In contrast, if I want to see my business prosper (or attain my degree), I can’t be doing much else - I need to specialize, right? I’d say no, *not right*. While it’s important to focus your attention on a particular goal, it mustn’t be to the exclusion of all the other important things around you.

Over-specialization, as I like to call it, leads to a single-track mindset where you stop pushing your horizons and assume that only information relevant to your goal is important. It’s all very well to march in quick time towards *your* one particular point on the horizon, but it’s far too easy to lose sight of all the *other* weird and wonderful things on it. I know that all of my “fringe hobbies” impact on the way I see the world and my approach to both work and other people.

So while it’s okay to specialize, don’t over-specialize or you’re in danger of stressing yourself out, alienating friends (or at least those unconnected with your specific goal) and, over time, losing interest in a broad range of subjects.


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