“Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any” Plato. These words are true. Note that the quote does not say that he will fail if he attempts several things, it however says that he will fail to achieve distinction in any.

What we aim for in life is not just success but distinction. Distinction announces itself and makes a person a force to be reckoned with in her field of endeavor. This does not mean that you have to bore yourself with just one thing your entire lifetime. It only means that since you can do anything especially well, why not focus all your energy on one thing that you would love to do now and pour yourself into it and see the results for yourself? And since knowledge is never in isolation, when you eventually change your area of specialization you can always carry with you lessons, experiences, and the unique capabilities you developed in your former area of expertise.

I am simply saying that at every point in your life, you should be a master at something, and who knows at the end of your life you may have succeeded in being a jack of all trades because of the different areas in which you have garnered expertise. Below is some explicit and nuanced importance of job specialization and especially in tech.

1. Time-saving:

This means that specialization enables you to grow faster by leaps and bounds. This is an essential incentive to a beginner. When you specialize initially, you learn faster, you are able to practice what you are learning faster and you see improvements faster, this will encourage you to keep putting in the required efforts to grow. Put together, all these shorten your learning curve. Just ensure that what you want to specialize in really interests and inspires you.

2. The more specialized you are, the more popular you become among your target audience:

One of the things you need most, especially as a beginner, is visibility. Specialization can offer you this at little or no cost. Take for example a medical copywriter- companies in medicine would prefer a medical copywriter to a random jack of all trades on any day. This is because the fellow already knows the industry in question and will not need as much prepping as a copywriter who dabbles into every industry on earth would.

This works just as well in the tech space. A company knows when to hire a “digital marketer” and when to hire a “growth marketer” depending on what their aim is. When a person specializes, he is likely to know more which will sponsor better results which will then distinguish him in his specific.

3. Development of skill:

Skill is developed with time and consistency. You need skill and experience. A lot of the factors that sponsor groundbreaking discoveries and change are more nuanced than they actually appear. The people who spot the changes that no one else anticipates or things that cannot just be explained away are usually experienced, people. Just the way an old woman can usually tell when a younger woman is in the early months of pregnancy. Sometimes they can just tell that something is wrong or will go wrong when nothing suggests it but somehow from years of experience, their brains and minds have picked up on patterns that they cannot easily explain. This is a great advantage of being experienced and spending a lot of time in a particular area.

4. Trust:

A specialized individual in any field will attract more trust than unspecialized people would. Among her customers, the people in her industry, and her target audience she will be trusted. This is because people would have seen her results for themselves and may have even benefited from her in one way or the other. This works because the audience is smaller than otherwise.

5. Increase in productivity:

The more you do something, the more dexterity and speed you exercise as you do things, and the more productive you become. For example, if you are a product designer, after 1-2 years of experience, you roughly know how long it would take you to think through a product, you know the stakeholders involved in your project, you know how long meetings would take, you know the questions to be asking the stakeholders involved. This means that you will naturally save more time, you will be able to plan better, you will learn how to relate with stakeholders better, and you know the tools you need. This is the way to become great at doing something. It however becomes quite complicated when you are changing careers every 2 months. But when you focus on one thing and become very good at it you develop speed

6. Higher pay:

The better you get at doing something the higher your pay naturally goes. This is because you have become an authority and have a few years of experience and hopefully success under your belt. Also more nuanced is the fact that the better you get the more confident you become and the more you request because you know what you are worth and what you can deliver and people will pay you for it because you are a safer option- the more traveled road. This is different however if you were a product designer 2 months ago, a salesforce admin last month and you are completing a data analysis course this month to begin practicing next month.

While these results may not be obvious in a short span of time, you naturally pick up on the adverse effects of not specializing when you try appraising your career journey 5 years after. The benefits of specialization pay in compound interest. Still curious? Discover some other mistakes you may want to avoid as a woman in tech here.