Range Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

But for me in my life experience Andrew it's range like to use David Epstein's book title right it's range.

the final book for me is called range and it's by David Epstein a book looking at the contrast between specialists and generalists and a key point of the book is that really the world needs more generalists we have a lot of specialists and we absolutely need them but we also need generalists that can sit in the middle pull these different pieces of complex problems together sit in the middle of different disciplines and drive change in the world

One of my favorite books in the last few years has been a book by David Epstein called Range. It's in praise of generalists. It shows through stories, data and examples that in the modern world being a generalist is better for solving complex problems.

There's a really lovely book that was written by a friend of mine, David Epstein. It's called Range.

Roger Federer and Tiger Woods, two of the greatest athletes of the last generation, both had profoundly different paths to greatness.

And Roger Federer played every sport under the sun and didn't really specialize in tennis until he was 15 or so.

In other words, when it comes to sports like that, what you really want to do is to delay the moment when you specialize.

You want a broad base and you want to hold off on trying to decide what sport you want to specialize at for as long as possible.

David Epstein. The book that he wrote that kicked all this off is called The Sports Gene... He wrote an update about Jill and Priscilla in his book, Range, Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.

I love this for my favorite my absolute favorite phrase in range was is a paraphrase from this woman.

Named her many a barra who's a professor at the London Business School and she studies how people make work transitions so her phrase was.

We learn who we are in practice not in theory, so the thesis of her work is that there's this idea that you can just introspect.

And go forth and know what you should be doing you know like like Clark Kent running into a phone booth ripping off isn't becoming comes out as Superman.

David Epstein, who's the author of a range and sports genius, friend of mine.

David Epstein, who wrote The Sports Gene and Range, told me grit is fit - when you have a good fit with something, you're gritty.

We discover who we are by doing it is something that David Epstein said in his book range.

I love David Epstein go on

I just need to say it's a great book he's a great guy.

Incredible book and he talked about this experience of this electrical engineer

The idea of range that David Epstein was so correct I think in putting his finger on is that you never want to lose some amount of sampling you never want to have a day in your life where you're only exploiting and not exploring because then you can't cross-fertilize with anything

You're going to talk about range now, right?

Correct. And I think in a way you could argue that range is a counterpoint to grit because he talks a lot about the benefits of doing lots of things and having multiple interests and not committing or specializing too early to any one thing.

For years we've been led to believe that picking a specific field of study as early as possible and sticking with it was the key to becoming a high performer in our field.

But what if the key to becoming great in a specific field was not to start narrowing our practices down as early as possible, but instead to study a wide breadth of seemingly unrelated fields entirely.

the thesis seems to be that often by specializing we're sacrificing true understanding or true performance.

I think in that well-meaning drive for a head start we often sort of short circuit learning even like whatever the material is.

we learn who we are in practice not in theory

For years we've been led to believe that picking a specific field of study as early as possible and sticking with it was the key to becoming a high performer in our field.

But what if the key to becoming great in a specific field was not to start narrowing our practices down as early as possible, but instead to study a wide breadth of seemingly unrelated fields entirely.

In the book, the thesis seems to be that often by specializing we're sacrificing true understanding or true performance.

I think that definitely rings true. I think it's understandable, it seems efficient, it's the well-meaning drive for a head start but I think you mentioned medicine again specifically, I think people are starting to recognize that that is actually sometimes problematic that while there's no question that specialization in medicine has been both inevitable and beneficial, I think people are increasingly realizing some of the drawbacks when you kind of take out people who have a view on the bigger picture.

We learn who we are in practice, not in theory.

For years we've been led to believe that picking a specific field of study as early as possible and sticking with it was the key to becoming a high performer in our field. But what if the key to becoming great in a specific field was not to start narrowing our practices down as early as possible, but instead to study a wide breadth of seemingly unrelated fields entirely.

In the book, the thesis seems to be that often by specializing we're sacrificing true understanding or true performance.

I think that definitely rings true I think it's understandable it seems efficient it's the well-meaning drive for a head start but I think you mentioned medicine again specifically I think people are starting to recognize that that is actually sometimes problematic that while there's no question that specialization in medicine has been both inevitable and beneficial I think people are increasingly realizing some of the drawbacks when you kind of take out people who have a view on the bigger picture.

I think in that well-meaning drive for a head start we often sort of short circuit learning even like whatever the material is.

we learn who we are in practice not in theory you actually have to do stuff and then reflect on it

Have you read David Epstein's book uh range?

I like David Epstein a lot he has this book called Range which I think a lot about

it's actually this really great sort of parenting book in disguise

the whole book is basically a contrast between Tiger Woods and Roger Federer

Have you read David Epstein's book Range?

His point is, you know, he quotes that famous line I forget what it is but it's like specialization is for insects is what it says but it's you know a mountain lion does one thing like really really well and a bear does a bunch of things pretty well and that's why bears can be so fucking big because they've got some redundancies built in right that they're not they're not having to hone every muscle and every you know thing and human beings are I think we have range we can do a bunch of different things not range in the sense that a mountain lion has a large range but range in in terms of a tool kit

Have you read David Epstein's book Range?

I have not I think you would really like it he well he wrote a book called The Sport he wrote a book called The Sports Gene which uh several years ago which is really good but then range is basically he's contrasting tiger woods and Roger Federer so like tiger woods uh it's basically from two years old is told told you're gonna be a golfer and he's basically raised in a kind of science experiment to um to you know to do nothing but live and breathe you know hitting this small white ball um whereas like Roger Federer like plays a bunch of sports he doesn't even really get serious about tennis until his like late teens and he just he has a different relationship with but they're both dominant both you know all-time greats um one has sort of more of a resilience and a flexibility and a lightness to him and the other is like kind of imprisoned in this thing and his point is that range having a range of skills and interests and being exposed to different things not just in in in uh art or sorry not just in sports but in all things is a better you know is a better way to be

Yeah, I don't know if anyone in the room has read David Epstein's book, Range, which I actually think is a parenting book in disguise.