"Accomplishing one thing well in a lifetime is already a perfect achievement." - Li Guoxiu

Since university, I chose to study in a "Mass Communication program." True to its name, I had to learn everything related to communication—marketing, public relations, advertising, film, television, journalism. The outside world collectively calls these media or communications industries, but they're actually quite distinct from one another.

It's true that I've been exposed to all these fields and have some understanding of each. On the surface, I seemed to have many talents, but that's exactly the problem: I wasn't particularly specialized in any single area. This made me extremely anxious for a period, knowing I was inadequate in each, which eventually eroded my confidence.

Or, when I did have a particularly strong skill in some domain and compared it to others, it was just average. So when I had two talents that stood out, they would directly be "averaged out," and I couldn't find my own distinctive edge.

Although we live in the "slash career era" where knowing a bit about multiple domains benefits us, conversely, it's also very easy to fall into a state of "unclear positioning."

From an economics perspective, a product's core competitiveness is formed by highlighting its differentiation from competitors. In terms of cost competition, consumer perception is a form of "cognitive monopoly."

This "cognitive monopoly" exists because human cognitive and memory capacities are limited. For any given product category, a single consumer can only remember a limited number of brands long-term—and these are not necessarily the brands with the highest exposure or largest advertising budgets, but rather the most differentiated ones.

Similarly, in large companies with so much talent, corporate positions are already occupied by correspondingly qualified people. Fresh graduates are most easily overlooked in this tide. Only sufficient "differentiation" allows you to be remembered and seize more opportunities.

When people specialize in a field long enough, they get noticed by "industry players seeking those specific capabilities." Therefore, regardless of how we learn or decide our next steps, we must first clarify what the overall environment needs and what we personally enjoy. Find the one thing we can genuinely pursue with passion, focus on doing it well, making it bigger, perfecting it—that's enough.