Seeing the big picture

“You should not have a favorite weapon. To become over−familiar with one weapon is as much a fault as not knowing it sufficiently well.”

– Miyamoto Musashi, “The Book of Five Rings“

In my academic research, I am often faced with a choice of exploring a new subject or focussing deeper on my core area of expertise. It is the well-known dilemma of specializing versus generalizing. Professional photographers face the same question when they decide to niche down on a specific subject or remain generalists.

Tim Ferriss, who wrote a very popular book about learning called “The 4-Hour Chef,” made compelling arguments for being a generalist. Specifically, being proficient in many areas allows one to see the big picture, recognize and explore connections and similarities between these areas. Aspiring to be the “jack of all trades and master of many”, as Ferris puts it, is also inherently more fun, and thus more conducive to happiness in daily life than forcing yourself to niche down for the sake of rapidly diminishing returns on your investment of effort in one specific activity.

I think that being a professional photographer, but not investing your entire identity into it, paradoxically, makes you a better photographer in the long term. This is somewhat similar to budo, the way of the martial arts, following which on a certain (high) level requires exploring other human activities, learning about human nature  and applying this knowledge to one’s core area of expertise. In fact, Minamoto Musashi,  who stated the principles for following the Way of Strategy in his “Book of Five Rings” (Go Rin no Sho), instructs: “Become aquatinted with every art.” and “Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything.”