Notes
Whether your range compounds
Mastery is one outcome done exceptionally well, which is the part the specialist and generalist debate keeps missing.
I used to think of mastery in terms of skills. It took me some time to understand that it’s really about producing a single outcome exceptionally well.
That’s the part the specialist vs. jack-of-all-trades debate often misses.
It frames mastery as a question of skills:
depth in one area,
or breadth across many.
But meaningful work rarely happens in isolation.
In my experience, it often asks for multiple capabilities at once.
Strategy.
Storytelling.
Design.
Language.
Judgment.
The real question is not whether you have range.
It’s whether your range compounds.
Mastery is when multiple strengths work together to achieve one clear result.
Not one skill.
One outcome.
That understanding changed the way I think about my work.