How do you approach gearing up alts in World of Warcraft?

I currently have three alts I play regularly when I play World of Warcraft. In addition to my main, the Death Knight and Paladin are played most (my main is, of course, a Warrior, and then I have a Warrior alt I also play somewhat frequently) and I often find myself wondering about how other people do this. Because I am hitting a hard wall in terms of how geared I’m really able to get these alts, while my main is edging into Heroic Ny’alotha. But to a degree, I think that’s fine.

I don’t feel like my alts need to be at the same level as my main because I’m not one of the players who really feels like they can play any of their characters at the same level of proficiency. I am miserable at playing my Paladin. She’s Ret, with a Holy offspec I have used exactly once, and I am simply not at all good at playing the class. I don’t really have to be. For whatever reasons it feels like Ret Pallies just can be played at a very low skill level and still whoop monster butt, to the point where I can clear each week’s invasion with minimal difficulty.

Meanwhile, my DK is a Blood DK with a Frost offspec, and I try a lot harder with this character to keep the gear up to date, to learn my rotation and do it well. I like to tank Mythic dungeons on her and I feel a lot of drive to be, if not great, at least good on her. I do every emissary that drops gear, run LFR, and while I don’t tank Mythics very often (I don’t want to hold back better geared players) I would feel comfortable doing so. I really focus on this alt a lot more and her gear reflects that.

So my question is, how do you do it? Do you get them to max level and then call it done and focus on your main? Do you instead pursue each alt to as high a level of gear as you can? What’s your approach to gearing and playing alts?