Corporations diversify by investing time and resources into
new areas of business. As individuals, each of us makes choices
about how to spend our time and energies. Typically, we could
divide our time between school, work, family, sleep, and play.
During high-stress work projects, we likely devote more of our
time to work; when studying for final exams or a professional
board exam (such as the CPA exam), we probably spend more
time and effort in the “student learning” mode. This manner
of dividing our time can be thought of as “personal diversification.”
Just as companies can invest in related or unrelated
activities, we make similar choices. While we attend college, we
may choose to engage in social and leisure activities with campus
colleagues, or we may focus on classwork at school and
spend our “play time” with an entirely separate set of people.