Breadth-first vs. Depth-first search

I know, I know, it's been MONTHS since I posted anything here. I've been busy. At work. This sounds so much like the excuses working parents use with their children when they were unable to keep the promise of coming home back early or remembering to bring them something they wanted (Ref: Liar Liar)

Anyway, this will not be a long post. I only want to express an idea.

For computer science people, the concept of depth-first search and breath-first search is probably no stranger. I was thinking about a completely different thing (apparently), and I came to the following realization.

The world is full of stuff. Everywhere. Whether you're standing in a Bambi-style meadow, surrounded by nature, watching bunnies jump around, or whether you're in a big city, surrounded by buildings, people passing you by everywhere, constantly bombarded by noises and publicity, or whether you're at home, doing whatever you like doing at home best, think of it, the world is ENORMOUS. It's true, you can now take a plane and travel around it in less than a day, but size is of no concern here. The point I'm trying to make here is this: the world is INCREDIBLY DIVERSE. It's just too much to describe, try to think of it yourself.

The world is also full of things to do. Full of it. (I mean it from an anthropocentric perspective). When you try to think and count all the things that people can do, you may realize that there is a vast number of activities, everywhere, all around the world. Please include hobbies, games, arts, and any kind of time-consuming activity you can imagine. The amount of things a person can DO is also VAST.

What I was thinking was, as a free individual, what should a person decide to do in his life? The possibilities are virtually infinite. He/she can decide to do absolutely anything he/she pleases. How do people, confronted with this enormous amount of possibilites, decide their activities at all? The average answer is to just keep going on the path they have always taken, without thinking of their alternatives. But that's just another story.

But now, as I realize the enormous amount of possibilites available, I realize something else. In my life, I've noticed I have sometimes performed some kind of breath-first search in my life. Huh? Well, I like to do a little bit of everything. I like sports, I like science, I like arts, I like traveling, I like computers, and in the end, I notice I've ended up with not many things that I particularly like or that I'm particularly good at. I can't really identify with a single activity I like the most. On the other hand, there are people who focus throughout their life on a single activity. They are depth-first searchers. Whether it may be running, swimming, playing the piano, or socializing, some people take their favorite activity to heart and practice and develop it throughout long periods of time. They become specialists, experts in their area, though perhaps (not always the case) useless in most other fields.

So what's the best approach? When I began to write this blog, I thought that a depth-first search would be the best answer, but now after writing it, it seems to me that the best option is to search smartly, humanely, and not algorithmically deterministically as the textbook-style searches I so scarcely just described.