Specialization is Key to Make More Money

Even though I’m in my 30s, I still find that there are so many things I wanted and spent a lot of time to master yet still haven’t achieved mastery, in fact, far from mastery. There is no way that I can master all of them! There are so many things I want to learn, it’s becoming impossible to master all, even any one of them.

Off topic: My blog has moved from zhuli.info to a new domain, acezhu.sandgames.net. In order to save money on the domain name, I decided to make both my personal website, my game studio and my games (which I decide to rename from Shajiao Games to Sand Games) in one domain, that is sandgames.net. It saves both time and money.

It’s been almost a year since I wrote a blog post. It’s time to get back into it. In the low cost way!

I moved from wordpress.com a few years ago to my own server and then, created a new blog that is a static site and deploy to inexpensive static hosting. It’s indeed a smart and money saving move!

Too many hobbies

Although I’ve been studying English for 20 years since junior high school, and I’m considered pretty good among Chinese people, needless to say, I’m still far from really mastering this language. For example, I still have a lot of words that I don’t know when I read English novels.

I’ve been playing Starcraft 2 on and off for 10 years, since 2012. Never reached Master League, but reached Diamond 1. I also have played Honor of Kings (it’s like a mobile version of League of Legends, it’s very popular in China) for a few years, and also managed to hit over 1700 elo.

Also, I’ve always thought about writing a novel, maybe even a nonfiction if I don’t have to worry about money(which, unfortunately is what I don’t have now). However, there is always no time to write it.

I’ve been around for more than thirty years, yet there are still so many things that I want to master still not making much progress. As you can imagine, it’s impossible to do a handful of things well. Chances are, if I don’t control my desires to want to master every thing I take interest in, it would probably take 1,000 years to master them all. I’m not kidding!

Because once you have mastered Astronomy, there is Geography. Once you have mastered Chemistry, there is Physics. There’s always something you haven’t mastered yet. It’s just impossible to master everything.

Economics

This is a huge mistake! Because it’s not economic!

What does economics tell us?

What economics tells us is that, you can make a lot of money by mastering one skill. However, after that, if you try to master more skills, you gain almost nothing more.

For example, suppose that inside a village in ancient times, there were carpenters, who were good at making furniture, cooks, who were good at cooking, farmers, who were good at farming, writers, who were good at writing novels, and people who made clothes.

As long as you learned one of these skills, it would be enough to survive inside this village.

Of course, there is a cost to learning a skill. Let’s say it takes 5 years to master a skill.

Therefore, it will take 25 years for you to master all 5 skills.

But can you make more money than the person who learns and masters only one skill for 25 years?

You can’t!

Because even though it seems you have mastered more skills than others. But, when you work, you can’t do so many things at once. So, not only do you not make more money, but instead, because any of your individual skill is not as competitive as people who only master one skill, you make less money instead.

This is ancient times. Modern society is more extreme. The economy in modern society is a much more collaborative economy.

Take food for example. If you order takeout, there are farmers who raise pigs, chickens and farm land, truck drivers who transport food, food markets where people buy food materials, restaurants who cook, software companies that make takeout platforms (such as Uber Eats), and couriers. Every meal you have is actually the result of the division of labor between these 8 parties.

No one person can master all the skills in this chain. As long as you master one of these skills, it’s enough to survive in society. But if you try to master more than one skill at the same time, your survival is likely to become more difficult.

Specialize, specialize, specialize

So the best way to make money in the modern world is to specialize. Specialize in one thing and you will do well.

For example, I’m a programmer, and more specifically, a game programmer. I have learned and practiced programming for almost 20 years by now. On top of that, I still try to learn new things about game-related technologies regularly (such as Unity Engine, which I have already learned and used for 10 years!) and new programming languages (such as Rust, which is a relatively new systems programming language, which is useful if I need performant components) that relates to game development. There are currently about 2 million people world wide working in game industry(this is my personal estimation), that is about 0.025% of world population. So, this is relatively a small profession. Which means there is not too much competition.

If I were to spend a few years of my time writing novels, that would be terrible. Instead of utilizing the skills I’ve learned and practiced for decades(that is programming), I’d, instead, be learning something I know absolutely nothing about, and most likely just spend a lot of time but making little to no money. That is like shooting myself in the foot.

Also, hobbies like trying to master competitive games, such as Starcraft 2 and Honor of Kings, are games that take forever to master.

If I put too much of my time into these things, even only a small percentage like 20%, I am risking making myself uncompetitive as a programmer and making less money.

Efficiency is really important if you want to do well in the modern world. We have to realize that trying to do everything is actually a very inefficient way to make money.

Companies need to specialize too

It’s not only true for individuals, but also true for companies. A company, too, should focus on a few things and do them well, so that it will be competitive in the modern society.

In fact, Apple is a good example. After Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, several hit products turned Apple around. First the iPod, and then the iPhone.

There was a time (I suppose) when the whole company focused on making the iPhone, and it was this one product that made Apple one of the most successful companies in the world.

In my opinion, it’s not the more products you have, the better. Instead, assume you already have a handful of products, the fewer products you have, the better.

Why?

Because if you make so many products, the resources you put into one product will be less, and the competitiveness of your product will decrease.

It’s better, to make a few great products than to make hundreds of okay ones. You’ll probably make more money. In fact, this is the strategy that I choose for my game studio, Sand Games. I plan to spend a few years on Rated Sudoku to make it the best Sudoku game in the world. I don’t think I will survive as an indie game developer if I start a new project every 6 months!

There are many companies, however, that are actually counter examples. For example, one of China’s most successful companies, Tencent, is a counter example.

Tencent’s core products is chat software, like QQ and WeChat, which are extremely successful in China. But, strangely enough, it had to get into games. And it somehow became the number one game publisher (in terms of game revenue) in the world.

What’s even more strange is that Tencent also have QQ music, Tencent Video(like Netflix). Tencent even is also a hosting provider(like AWS).

There is another strange phenomenon in the world. It is that cell phone manufacturers are try to make smart cars, for example, Xiaomi SU7 is a successful example. Huawei and Apple also tried to make cars, but are not so lucky.

In fact, these are all very bad examples. Big companies are moving away from their core competencies and doing something else. It will only make them less and less competitive.

Maybe this is a common problem of big companies. If they have money, they want to do everything.

It’s like, as a individual, when we have time, we want to do everything.

Of course, the result of it is shooting yourself in the foot. I hope no one will imitate them! 🙂