Seeking Less Diversification, More Maturity

As you go from high school to college to your twenties to your
thirties, you usually go from doing more things to less things. As an
example, in high school, I had about six or seven classes at a time,
played a sport, was heavily involved in three clubs and casually
involved in five or six others. Of course, I had a ton of friends and
saw my family every day. In college, I took about four or five
classes at a time, was heavily involved in two clubs and casually
involved in two or three others. I had a bunch of friends and saw my
family twice a year.

After college, I worked at one place and volunteered at another, went
to church, and kept in touch with some of my high school and college
friends. After that, I quite my volunteer position and worked
full-time, went to church, and started seeing less of my friends and
less often. Now I'm in my early thirties. My job is more
specialized, I spend most of my non-work time taking care of my
daughter, and see even less of my friends and much less often.

I don't write this wistfully wishing for my high school or college
days: I don't have the desire or the energy for that lifestyle
anymore. I write this to make a point about how we spend our time.
With greater investments in less things, we run counter to the notion
of diversification. The good of diversification is that when one
things zigs, another thing zags to compensate. In fact, I learned in
business school that diversification, when done correctly, can boost
your return and minimize your risk.

So what's going on when we're becoming less diversified with our time
and commitments? Are we reducing our "return" and raising our "risk"
in life? On the contrary. If we're living right, we're drawing on
our experience to determine what are our best uses of time. In high
school and college, we didn't know, so we did a little bit of
everything to help find out. Now that we're twice that age, we don't
need to experiment like that anymore. To attend the meetings of six
clubs every month would be a waste, because we know now from
experience that five of them, however interesting and noble they might
be, aren't worth our increasingly scarce time. Far from reducing our
"return" and raising our "risk" in life, if we're living right, we're
reaping greater returns and avoiding greater risk because we know
what's worth our time.

All of this, of course, presupposes that we're living right. And
while we may be more mature, we're not perfect. It is so easy in our
culture, especially, to second-guess ourselves. It is tempting to
want to diversify, because having your eggs in less baskets, even if
they're the right baskets, seems scarier. After all, having less
baskets means there's a lot of attractive and worthy baskets out there
that we don't have our eggs in.

I recently discussed this with a friend of mine, who, like me, has
ambition that far outstrips the physical limitations of his time and
energy. We're both happy with what we give our days to, but easily
wander into the land of second-guessing. If we are pursuing more
vigorously a certain professional competence, for example, we are not
free to pursue other professional competences. And if others around
us have decided to pursue those competences, we will necessarily be
inferior to them in those areas. If we decide to focus our relational
energy on one group, there will be other groups that mean a lot to us
that we will drift away from.

And that is the cost of doing one thing and not the other. And that
is the reality of growing up and becoming less diversified. Those who
age well learn not only how to be less diversified in ways that
increase their "return" and decrease their "risk" in life, but also
how to be at peace with falling behind in the other things. It's a
maturation process my friend and I understand we're going through, and
one we pray for the faith to go through well. For it takes faith to
know that the things we're giving ourselves to are the things that
ultimately matter; for with time and energy as scarce as they are, who
can waste them on things that don't?