If you were magically given 10,000 hours to be amazing at something, what would it be? The more clarity you have on this response, the better off you’ll be.

Scott Adams popularized the idea of finding the intersection of 2-3 things you’re best at even if you’re not best at any of them individually. He wasn’t neither the best cartoonist nor the best writer nor the best entrepreneur, but he was the best combination. It could be a combination of expertise, relationships, sensibilities, and skills that you’ve accumulated over the years. If you’re just starting out, ideally it picks up where your childhood left off. Now, I spent my childhood trying to make the NBA. So if like me, you misallocated your childhood in the skills department, you have to be more creative. Later on, I realized I could apply the self-discipline and systems thinking I deployed when trying to be good at basketball into other fields, and found some that better fit my natural abilities.

If you’re a generalist, you want to be the best at the intersection of a few different skills, even if it’s a few disparate things. The challenge is it's easy to lie to yourself & say that you're a generalist when in reality you've tried a bunch of things and you've flaked out when things got hard and then tried something else.

Some people who you think are generalists have also specialized. Malcolm Gladwell for example writes about lots of topics, but he's mastered the art of translating academic work for a mass audience. Tyler Cowen self-defines himself as specializing as a generalist, but he spent a couple decades going deep on economics.

A personal moat is a set of unique and accumulating competitive advantages in the context of your career. Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage specific to you that's not only durable, but compounds over time.