Earlier today, my girlfriend asked for my thoughts about whether she should specialize or generalize in medicine. Here’s my reply.
Education
I went to a liberal-arts college, so I believe firmly in a well-rounded, all-encompassing education. What you learn in econ, you can apply to English lit, and what you can learn in art history, you can apply to calculus. To be well-educated means not that you’re in an expert in your chosen field, but that you can converse intelligently about most subjects.
Specialization
That said, when it comes to a career, I prefer specialization. In fact, this is one of the issues I struggle with in my elevator pitch. I like to say that I do three things: Ghostwriting, digital marketing, and workshops. But if I were hiring a ghostwriter, I wouldn’t want someone who “specializes” in so many things; I’d want someone who truly specializes in the one thing I need. As they say, A jack of all trades tends to be a master of none.
I’ve found the same to be true of handymen. In the past, I looked for pros who did everything — for example, someone who could install a new electrical outlet and then touch-up the resulting hole in the wall. But, in truth, the guy I ended up hiring for several projects was an electrician who also painted, and his proficiency in the latter was lousy; I had to hire a real painter to finish the job. Since then, I only hire specialists. They’re more expensive, but they’re also much better.
The bottom line (at least in my view): It’s wonderful to have wide-ranging interests, but if I’m going in for brain surgery, I’d prefer to be operated on by someone who lives and breathes craniotomies, rather than someone who splits his time between the OR and, say, a startup.
Purple Squirrels
To be sure, there’s an exception to this thinking, and it’s a big one. So-called purple squirrels — people who do several things expertly — do exist.
Jerome Groopman is both the chair of medicine at Harvard and the author of five books for a general audience. Atul Gawande is another doctor-writer: A surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the author of four best-selling books. Both Groopman and Gawande are also longtime staff writers for the New Yorker.
And let’s not forget Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Thomas Edison, all of whom pair engineering brilliance with world-class business acumen.
The list goes on. Prince never encountered a musical instrument he couldn’t master. Bo Jackson was named an All-Star in both pro baseball and pro football. And, of course, there’s Ben Franklin, a quintessential Renaissance men.
So it’s possible that you can be both a generalist and a specialist. But first you have to a genius. Are you a genius?
