The case for doing one thing well

The modern advice is to be a generalist, to build a portfolio, to have many irons in many fires. I have tried it. What I actually had was a portfolio of almosts.

The thing nobody mentions about doing several things is that several things done at ninety percent each reads, from the outside, as one thing done badly. Craft compounds in only one direction at a time. The writer who spends ten years on essays has something no amount of parallel effort manufactures: a body of work.

I am not against range. I am against range as a substitute for finishing. Learn broadly, by all means. But choose one thing to be known for, and give it a decade. Depth has a return rate that breadth never matches, mostly because so few people stay anywhere long enough to collect it.