Hi ,

​

At the height of his career, after leading the Chicago Bulls to win three back-to-back NBA championships, Michael Jordan retired from basketball to play Minor League Baseball.

Growing up, his father had hoped Jordan would one day become a pro baseball player. So, following his father's death, Jordan quit basketball in order to live out his late father's dream.

Yet, Jordan didn't excel at baseball the way he did at basketball. And after two years, he returned to basketball to lead the Chicago Bulls to three more back-to-back NBA championship wins, cementing his place as the greatest basketball player of all time.

Michael Jordan didn't achieve his greatness by being everything, everywhere, all at once - he wasn't the greatest basketball player *and* the greatest baseball player. 

Instead, he achieved it by being something, somewhere, when it mattered - as the greatest player ever in the sport he was born to play.

Here's the thing...

The problem with trying to be everything, everywhere, all at once* is you will inevitably be nothing more than average, all around.

The opportunity cost of trying to be "kinda good" at everything is you lack the time needed to become "really good" at something.

The solution is to specialise where you have the most value to add.

Drew Conway's famous Venn Diagram describes the data science skill set as the intersection of domain knowledge, mathematics and statistics, and computer science. Yet, each of these three disciplines could take a lifetime or more to master on its own.

Rather than trying to be the best data scientist across all types of analysis, all programming languages and all domains, pick an area to specialise in within each of these disciplines and go from there. 

For example, focus on becoming the best data scientist that uses Python to solve text analytics problems in the financial services sector.

AI-based tools, such as Chat-GPT, can now produce outputs better than the average person. So, it is no longer viable to build a career around being average.

The future-proof alternative is to strive constantly to be better than average.

And that means being something, somewhere, when it matters.

Talk again soon,

Dr Genevieve Hayes.

* As opposed to the movie Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, which is one of the most original movies I've seen in recent years - you really should see it.

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