Range | Book Review
Will keep it precise, short, and to the point. Layout the points and will not go vertically but horizontally as is the name Range.
So in the book Range, the author David Epstein tries to layout the idea of the importance of generalization also whilst there’s a huge hype for specialization. He states examples and makes a solid point that being Jack of all trade can also lead you to success.
Cult of the headstart: Often we have heard that start early and you will be the best or at least better than the one who starts the same but later. The author gives an example where a man starts to train his daughters early and dedicates their life in the same field and finds them getting defeated later in time from computers and even from players who have a generalized experience and started late. In this chapter, he tries to layout the point that often we hear and been told the starting early will get you to the top but that's not always how things play out.
Wicked World: If it's a game of chess or any other game which has some specific rules and the outcome totally depends on those rules and nothing uncertain can play out then it would have been so easy to live in the world but that’s not the actual case. The world is wicked things might not work out the way you want, even if you have accounted for a lot of factors the least affecting factor might play out and ruin it all. So we are suggested to be generalized to operate in such a world where there are a lot of unknown and known factors that could affect the outcome. There’s a lot of randomnesses.
Less of the same is more: You give yourself the time to sample. What I mean is you should not be having a tunnel view where you are not giving yourself the opportunity to try new things. Try anything and everything you feel like doing and see how it goes, you should give yourself time to sample around and find what you are good at and then pursue it often the people who don’t sample and have no generalistic approach suffer.
Learning, Fast and Slow: Here the author argues that often what we find easy in the beginning doesn’t pay us more in the long run where the hard things help and turn out to be more fruitful. Providing hints and doing the same type of things makes the mind grasp the pattern and even though we don’t get the concept we still end up doing it right known as procedural learning and it doesn't help when you are trying to play the game for long.
Thinking outside Experience: When you are specialized in a field you often don’t think outside that field and tend to think within that domain you are an expert in. The author asks you to find an analogy similar to that concept if you want Range in your life.
The trouble with too much grit: Well of course there are examples where people who stay persistent even despite so much failure did get success and it's on them to judge whether that success matters when weighed against loss but often this grit and saying ki I will do it no matter what is a specialist problem. The author gave some examples in accordance to high military training and a painter where he shows how one style doesn’t work you gotta change it and you should know when you have to sometime give your best asset for some better change.
Flirting with your possible selves: You should give yourself some yes even when you haven’t visioned about it and it might become your thing. Your self should be volatile is what he mean here.
The outsider advantage: When you are so much specialized then you are on the tip where of course in your field you are better but you miss obvious things just because you are neglecting cases so easily because of your error appetite whereas a generalistic could be better which gave birth to a famous company InnoCentive which solves a problem which is sometimes not being solved by the best experts. So you must ask non-experts sometimes.
Lateral thinking with withered technology: Modern technology could even complicate the process and ease of work so you must use the technology but sometimes use the already existing basic called Old School. He gave examples where the author has shown how Nintendo was the big thing back then.
Fooled by expertise: Experts are fundamentally bad at forecasting. Well, we often tend to go-to experts when it has been literally seen and researched how experts are horribly wrong at predicting. Well since there is no one better to correct than the chances of you being wrong multiplied. You should keep updating your perspective toward things in this fast-moving world. You should not be obsessed with being right all the time.
Learning to drop your familiar tools: You should be adaptable and have the tendency to bend. The situation does change so do the tools that’s what being told here with examples but this was the baseline.
Deliberate Amature: Do things you are curious about. The time when you are not productive in terms of your first priority then in that downtime you should find things that could fill there to add Range to your life.
When you get to know about fields even a little you get a chance to draw the analogy from those fields which could help you in your current circumstances and can add Range to your life.
