Double Down on Your Strengths
When I was younger, I was often told to work on my weaknesses. Find the things that I'm not great at, I was advised, and strive to become better at them. There’s some wisdom to this approach, especially for skills that we all need to develop, such as reading, writing, or speaking up in meetings. But as we mature and gain a greater appreciation for our passions, strengths, and skills, we learn that we may not be able to excel at everything. And that’s okay. What really matters is finding those things that we can truly be phenomenal at—perhaps even among the best at—and honing those skills.
If you look at some of the most successful people in the world—the most accomplished athletes, the most impactful entrepreneurs, the most talented musicians—they spend far more time honing their craft than becoming better at tangential pursuits. The best tennis players spend countless hours trying to improve their game on the margins, as opposed to focusing the same energy on becoming average at some other sport. This allows them to have an extraordinary impact, reach tremendous heights at things they are passionate about, and find greater levels of fulfillment.
I love having a broad array of interests. I’m a huge advocate for being an amateur at many different things, so much so that I’ve written a separate article on it. Yet, I recognize that I can't devote the same amount of time and energy to physics, say, that I do to science-driven venture capital and entrepreneurship. Conceiving, founding, building, running, scaling, and enhancing a multi-billion-dollar enterprise focused on esoteric areas within medicine, science, and engineering requires a lot of dedication. It precludes pursuing other things with the same level of intensity. In life, we have to make choices. In the end analysis, we have limited resources and need to invest them wisely.
If we spread ourselves too thin and are constantly trying to cover our weaknesses, we'll never be able to compound our strengths.
This is where Pareto’s principle, or the 80/20 rule, comes in. Most highly successful people—
think of the paragon of whatever sport or profession comes to mind—dedicate the majority of their resources toward the one thing, or few things, they excel at. The remaining 20 percent might go to their golf game, picking up the guitar, or learning chess. Magus Carlsen invariably spends 1000s of hours studying chess, even though he’s already at the very peak of the chess world. He's got other interests, yet he knows that his greatness and success is predicated on being exceptional at what he is best at.
The world of academia, athletics, and entrepreneurship has become increasingly specialized. The concept of the Renaissance person, someone who has mastered many independent disciplines, is becoming an increasingly challenging ideal to fulfill in a world proliferating with knowledge and how-to videos. The knowledge doubling curve, often attributed to the polymath Buckminster Fuller, has contracted exponentially over the past century. Around 1900, it was speculated that knowledge was doubling every 100 years. It’s now speculated that knowledge is doubling every year—and very soon it may double every day. Keeping up with, let alone having expertise in, everything is impossible.
Surgical specialization offers a great example. More than a century ago, general surgeons were far more common. Back then, many practitioners performed a wide array of procedures. Over time, though, specializations took hold. Now ophthalmic surgeons have very different professional tracks than cardiothoracic surgeons. Even within ophthalmic surgery, corneal surgeons, glaucoma surgeons, and retina surgeons undergo different fellowship training programs and tend to focus on their specific sub-disciplines. It’s quite rare for a fellowship-trained cornea specialist to perform retina surgery. And even within retina surgery there are specializations, such as the pediatric retinal surgeon.
Oftentimes, people who do proliferate capabilities, me included, do so using the leverage of an established platform. My academic engagements at Harvard and MIT leverage the platform we’ve built at Northpond Ventures. It’s an area of adjacency that’s substantially benefited by my core area of focus. Looking for areas of synergy and leverage can be a powerful way to expand into new areas where you can have an impact in a reasonable amount of time.
We all pursue things for the love of it. Yet for me, the fact that I've invested a lot of time and focus on medicine, science, and entrepreneurship doesn't do much for my guitar playing skills. And that’s just fine. I'm not intent on becoming a professional guitarist. And I’m cognizant of how I allocate my resources accordingly.
Remarkably, one of the best ways to be relevant in a whole host of different arenas is to have very discrete expertise and find ways to make that relevant in other capacities. Although I’m not in a position to be a professional neuroscientist, leveraging my specific knowledge of the retina and combining it with my entrepreneurial skills has enabled me to have impactful collaborations with professional neuroscientists. Finding ways to make your discipline relevant to other disciplines is a great way to expand your engagement, while interfacing with people functioning at a high level in other areas.
In life, it’s best to have compassion for your shortcomings. We all have them. Acknowledge them; be aware of them. Select the one thing you can be exceptional at, that you truly love, and commit yourself to it. Yes, reserve some time for your hobbies, but know the difference between them and your primary pursuit. As a means to grow more rapidly in new areas, extend into areas of adjacency by leveraging your platform and talents. You’re far more likely to persevere in the face of challenges when you do what you’re good at. Double down on your talent and your passion and you’ll attain heights of accomplishment that would not be possible by merely averaging up your weak spots.