A common theme when approaching a problem is that you can go *broad* (horizontally) or *deep* (vertically). The relative merits of each approach are situation-dependent. There is no “right” approach, this is one of those things that you have to evaluate based on the particulars of the situation and preferences those involved. There’s a physical metaphor I’m reaching for here that I can’t quite settle on, something about pouring a liquid into a test tube or a pan. Broad vs deep. I can’t quite articulate it. But the rate of ingress (ie work) is the same. It’s about how that is distributed. This is the sort of thing you'd consider when you're using [[Systems Thinking]]. ## Examples - **Debt repayment** - *Broad* - pay all debts off roughly equally - *Deep* - fully pay off the smallest debt, making minimum payments to the rest (the “snowball” method), then move to the next one - **Cleaning** - *Broad* - clean what’s next to you, wherever it goes, clean what’s dirty there, bounce around your house always getting the closest mess - *Deep* - pick an small-ish area (eg the counter), clean ONLY that area until it is done, then pick a new area - **Skills** - *Broad* - the Jack-of-all trades who knows enough to be dangerous at almost everything - *Deep* - the artisan who is completely untouchable at the area of their art, but otherwise not super useful - **Tool development** - *Broad* - [[Notion]]. A tool that doesn’t have a *specific* use, but is roughly equally good at things like task management and note taking, but being outmoded by dedicated tools in each area - *Deep* - Todoist. A tool that is really only good as a [[Task Manager]], and sort of sucks at note taking - **Business Organization** - *Broad* - each function is seen by the reps who are aligned to the products going through that function - *Deep* - every product line is seen by the same reps, who are aligned to the functions they perform **** ### Source - ### Related -