The book — Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein — makes the point that (surprise, surprise) “generalists triumph in a specialized world.”

It caught my attention because I’ve long been stressing the opposite: the importance, for solo professionals in particular, of having a niche, focusing your efforts, blah, blah.

What I’m realizing, though, is that he’s talking about reality — the benefits associated with a broad perspective and range of experiences — whereas I’m talking about marketing.

Getting hired is not about being smarter or more capable. It’s about coming in first in a winner-take-all competition (second place and 100th place amount to the same thing).

And while it can be painful when describing your business to ignore all the things you are capable of doing, when you claim to specialize in solving a particular problem for a particular group of people, you move right to the front of the “maybe we should hire them” line.

Is it objectively logical? No. But human beings never have been.