Dilemma - Deep or Wide

A lot of people have been contemplating on going wide vs deep in their life -profession or otherwise. What exactly does one mean by going deep? Going deep means gaining expertise in a specific area by devoting one's attention to the same. There are many anecdotes to support this thought. There is a famous idea prevalent in the contemporary society that one requires 10000 hours of practice to develop mastery of any art. Expressions like domain expert, industry expert, Black belt etc. denote the same concept. They all point towards perfection or deep knowledge achieved in a particular trait through long-sustained efforts.

Now lets turn our attention towards going 'wide'. Width refers to the expanse, or how far you can go. If you owned a piece of land wide enough, you may come across many different artifacts and changes in soil, topography, etc. Width thus essentially has come to correspond to the ability of knowing multiple traits. In professional world, people are called 'Generalists' when you can't categorize their role or knowledge to a specific matter. These are people who are aware of multiple things, have tried their hands at multiple traits. General Managers and CEOs are supposed to have a wide experience and understanding.

So, should you focus your efforts towards going deep or wide. There are several arguments in favour of each side. The theory of 'use and disuse of organs' imply that you should be using multiple organs (wide) to keep the lesser used ones working and relevant when you need them. This could mean that if you ignore certain traits, there is a possibility that you would not be able to use the same when you require it. This idea essentially points to the constrain of time and effort and prioritizing your efforts. While you may go deep, you are likely to lose out on the width. In popular culture, 'Chandni Chowk to China' highlighted that depth essentially becomes your strength when the cook turned fighter is able to use the oft-repeated rolling action as he prepared rotis comes handy in dealing with enemies. But does that single action suffice? After all, he had to learn and train a lot. Does this mean that while depth help you create strengths, width allows you to cover your weaknesses. What would you choose? Reinforcing your strengths or alleviating your weaknesses? Tough choice, isn't it?

But is this really a choice? After all, width and depth refer to extent in different dimensions. While it may be a good philosophical exercise to understand if the two mean the same looked from different perspectives, such an understanding isn't easy to beget. It's easy to see that the one may choose not to opt for either - I may neither go deep nor wide. While, it may feel like a useless exercise and difficult to achieve in the true sense, there are some people and certain circumstances where one might be able to limit one's efforts - imagine a heir born in a rich family with lot of resources and people at disposal. Perhaps not much to do, isn't it. But the ordinary life is a lot different.

Let's take the help of mathematics. Are we really constrained by the volume of our efforts where an increase in one dimension leads to reduction in other. Might be, the two are inversely correlated as the examples from around illustrate. But are they linearly inversely correlated. Well it's a little difficult to say. A more efficient person may be able to put more effort in increasing both the dimensions. Well it is easy to extrapolate it and assume that the perfect being would be infinite in all dimensions. We are not the perfect beings but may be we can try our best. Let's test the limits. What comes around as a constraint might not be there some other time. After all, a river finds its way across mountains to reach the sea eroding the challenges that come in the way. Records in sports are frequently broken.

By the way, another interesting thought, could there be more than these two dimensions. Food for thought?