Terrific post, Chris. What you are talking about is the difference between breadth and depth of experience. While breadth gives a wealth of experience, it's when we focus in on one area or aspect (and by necessity therefore narrow the use of our time to exclude others) that we achieve a true mastery. Needless to say, there are a lot of proverbs about this too.
In the purely material world, one I ran into was in the world of shooting and firearms: "Always beware the man with one gun; he knows how to use it."
If you are into shooting and firearms as a hobby, sport or necessary lifeskill, have you ever noticed the difference between people with dozens or hundreds of firearms of all types and kinds who shoot all different kinds of disciplines with them, changing guns on a regular basis, versus those who only own one or two guns and focus on one single sport? It's the second type who are usually in the upper echelons of shooters in their favoured discipline; the first ones are all over the map.
Applied to life in general, it becomes much more powerful. The Chinese, of course, have sayings about it: "Any man who could concentrate on any given problem for as much as three minutes, could rule the world." And even more succinctly, "If you can command yourself, you can command the world."
But it can be dangerous stuff. The search for meaning in narrow depth of experience rather than shallow breadth led one of the most immensely rich and enormously powerful men of his day, Prince Siddartha Gautama, to become an ascetic sage eventually known as the Buddha. In Christianity, it has led princes and paupers, rogues and heroes, to become monks. An extreme was the early Christian Stylites -- the guys who lived on pillars in the desert, dressed mainly in loincloths, having eschewed the fleshly world in favour of the pursuit of the world of the mind and soul.*
And centuries later, Rene Descartes narrowed his eventual proof of the existence of everything down to proof of his own existence in the sole certainty he had in the world: "I think, therefore I am."
So good luck in your personal quest, Chris. It can be as profound and life-changing as you choose to make it. Just be aware that it could be dangerous stuff and may eventually lead to you sitting on a pillar in a desert with only one razor, one soap, one brush and one tuck of blades to support you...
*N.B.: I believe the Stylites were also distinguished by their long unkempt beards, messy hairstyle, and general personal filth. As an aspect of that world of the senses they despised, personal grooming was not high on their list of priorities. If you do ultimately become some sort of monk, Chris, please be a well-groomed one: the Shaving Monk, perhaps.
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