My gut feeling is that these people probably do well because they are so incredibly passionate about x or y. But if that’s not your style, then don’t try to change. Instead consider what Stefano alludes to above: there are many academic career paths, of which only one is the hyper-specialist. The jack-of-all-trades is increasingly in demand, particularly for policy relevant research that needs to combine multiple disciplines. And a dedicated teacher can also be valuable to their department.

I once heard somewhere that your prospects for tenure are determined by approximately 10% research, 40% external profile and 50% “will you fit in here”. Those ratios may not hold everywhere but it’s certainly worth bearing in mind before committing to a single track.

and what are those?

probably making the body it represents more powerful.

this means hiring people who are likely to accomplish what needs to get done.

the crudest measure of this is pulling in grant money. so yes, if you are doing something very hard that pulls in grant money, then you should have a leg up. you must understand that not everything that is technically hard to do has this property.

a less crude measure is: are you the kind of person that would help the rest of the department work better, i.e. produce more, better publications (i.e., in the end, collectively pull in more grant money)?
are you willing to listen to and comment intelligently on other people’s work? do you have the skills to streamline horribly disorganized lab practices?

not thinking about these issues is what caused my former academic career to come to an end.