There is no such thing as a master key that will unlock all doors.
Arnold Toynbee, British historian
Contrary to popular belief that one should select a single discipline from childhood and stick to it to achieve success, David Epstein distills several arguments showing that the present and the future belongs to generalists, rather than specialists.
About the author 👨🏫
David Epstein is the author of the #1 New York Times best seller Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, and of the bestseller The Sports Gene. He has a master’s degrees in environmental science and journalism and has worked as an investigative reporter for ProPublica and a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He lives in Washington, DC.
Summary: Why Should We Cultivate Range?
This book is mainly an invitation to adopt a polymath mindset in our lives. Most of the book consists of exposing arguments and examples to convince us that it is better to acquire a broad range of skills rather than remain a specialist in a single area.
The author separates life’s domains, areas, and disciplines into two categories: “kind” domains, and “wicked” ones.
“Kind” domains generally comprise disciplines that are highly predictable and close-ended. It includes games and sports such as chess, or golf.
“Wicked” domains, on the other hand are trickier to master and share the following characteristics:
the problems to solve are not easily defined
a lot of data is not available
“Feedback loops” are slow or non-existent, which means it is hard to see the result of our actions and adapt our behavior accordingly.
David Epstein argues that most domains in life fall into this second category: think about the job market, science, politics, and most areas in your life.
He also demonstrates that the method to solve problems differs a lot between these two problem categories.
In “kind” environments, experts mostly rely on instinct and recognize patterns, based on which they take a decision. They see a pattern, act, and evaluate after (feedback loop). A good example of this is the chess player: he recognizes a board setting, makes a move, and then evaluates the result.
In wicked environments, such methods work poorly, because of the inherent characteristics of these domains. Patterns can become invalid because of new variables to consider; feedback loops are not as straightforward and quick.
What works instead in such environments is the capacity of abstraction, thinking in analogies and concepts, and re-using ideas from other domains; these qualities are better acquired by exploring different domains, rather than focusing on a single one.
The book presents many examples and arguments backing up the fact that these open-world qualities are more and more important in today\’s world, and that the best way to develop them is through adopting a polymath mindset.
Summary by Chapter
Chapter 1: The Cult of the Head Start
The author takes the example of Tiger Woods to show that today\’s world idealizes the idea that one should choose a single discipline and stick to it for success.
However, reality and experiments show that this approach only works under some conditions :
the feedback loop (knowing whether your action or choice was successful or not) must be instant
the problem should be well-defined and close-ended Disciplines that follow these criteria fall into “kind games”. For instance, chess, golf, and other sports or games. In these domains, experts succeed by relying on instinct and recognizing patterns they learned through repetition.
The problem is that most areas of life are not “kind” games, but rather fall into the category of “wicked” domains, or open-world problems.
Chapter 2: How the Wicked World Was Made
As people and organizations become more interconnected worldwide, people naturally have to develop their capacity for abstraction, a cross-disciplinary skill that allows finding patterns and concept between seemingly different things.
The author highlighted the research results by psychologist Alexander Luria, who found that peasants in the USSR developed more and more abstraction as their world opened (most notably with the rise of collective farming).
Abstraction is a necessary skill in the 21st century. Constrained and repetitive tasks will be automated, while rewards will go to those who can export one concept from one domain to another.
Chapter 3: When Less of the Same is More
The broader we learn, the more we can create abstractions in our minds, and the more creative we get.
Chapter 4: Learning, Fast and Slow
In this chapter, we find many common grounds with the book Make It Stick. The main idea is that efficient learning is slow and counterintuitive and that university exams are usually poor predictors of real performance on a domain years after the exam. The method for success is very different between kind and wicked environments. In “kind” environments, you choose and evaluate after. In wicked environments, you evaluate and choose after.
Chapter 5: Thinking Outside Experience
Epstein uses the example of scientist Kepler to show that analogies are powerful tools to solve open-ended problems. But people are naturally bad at this game and tend to use a single analogy, that is very close to the studied situation; a better strategy usually involves finding an array of analogies, among which many are from domains not related to the experiment.
The author warns us about a cognitive bias that we could name “the Disruptive Startup bias”. When looking too closely at the details of a project, it tends to deform our opinion and overestimate its chances of success.
Chapter 6: The Trouble with Too Much Grit
When it comes to life choices, grit is an overrated quality. There’s been too much focus on it, while we know that enabling people to test between different choices before committing leads to natural grit after a while.
With the switch to a knowledge economy, the capacity of abstraction becomes a much-wanted quality across all domains; therefore, people who possess it don’t need to stay on one career path.
Distinguish between good and bad grit: setting criteria for when to quit; and when not to.
Chapter 7: Exploring Your Possible Selves
According to the findings of the Dark Horse Project and other studies, sinuous career paths are not a small minority.
In many cases, we are poor judges of what our desires will be in the long term, because :
We overestimate how stable our desires will be in the future (\”end-of-history\” fallacy)
We underestimate the impact of context on our decisions.
The author there argues that, instead of long-term planning, successful career shifters optimize their plans in the short term, by taking the solution that offers the most promising range of options at any given moment.
“Test and learn” is better than “plan and implement”.
Chapter 8: The Outsider Advantage
Specialization leads to the Einstelling effect: the tendency to use old known methods, even if better ones are available.
The more specialized a domain is, the higher the chance it has to be solved by an outsider.
Chapter 9: Lateral Thinking with Whithered Technology
Yokoi, Nintendo inventor’s motto: “putting cheap, simple technology to use in ways no one else considered”.
In innovation, we need both “focused frogs” and “visionary birds”.
When analyzing the most prolific inventors (numbers of patents), one type stands out: the “polymath” type, with a T-shaped knowledge.
Research shows that diversity of knowledge is more efficient when in a single individual, rather than split in a diverse team.
Chapter 10: Fooled by Expertise
In open-world problems, expertise does not lead to better forecasts.
For example, Philip Tetlock’s experiments show that experts are horrific forecasters. According to his studies, the best type of forecasters is a small group of generalists that discuss and are not afraid to challenge each other with contradictory opinions.
How to improve forecasting efficiency :
generate a list of events w/ a deep similar structure and work like a statistician
learn lessons for every bad prediction (constructive feedback)
Chapter 11: Learning to Drop Your Familiar Tools
Experienced groups or individuals tend to become rigid under pressure and regress to what they know best. This can be dangerous in many situations (ex: NASA, firefighters). People must learn to drop their familiar tools when it\’s needed.
How to encourage a group culture where you help people drop their tools when it’s needed?
managers should tolerate ambiguity and conflict
promote and encourage dissent
have a standard process and send pushed in the opposite direction to mitigate it
Chapter 12: Deliberate Amateurs
We should learn to cultivate inefficiency and probing in hard environments.
Practical Takeaways
Here are some practical advice that I extracted from this book.
How to Tackle Wicked World Problems
When you are facing a problem, no matter the area, here are some steps you can follow.
Define the problem. “A problem well put is half solved”. Defining a problem simplifies it, and makes it more manageable. Also, try finding some criteria for success and failure.
Use estimations if it makes sense. Try to reason with Fermi estimations.
Think in probabilities, not (only) in boolean logic.
Find as many analogies as you can to your current problem. The further from the original problem, the better.
Find different angles of view, use different mental models, and compare the results.
Force yourself to find counterarguments, contradict your findings, and abandon ideology.
Conclusion
David Epstein furnishes numerous arguments and examples to substantiate the thesis that it is more desirable to pursue a “Renaissance Man” lifestyle, rather than a specialized one.
Thanks to the many points and examples in this book, the reader can extract not only reasons but also practical advice to apply in their daily life to embody this ideal. More specifically, the systematic approach of analogical thinking is probably the most enlightening idea in this book.
I only regret that the book reads a bit like an accumulation of bullet points to back up the main thesis, and that examples are sometimes a bit too verbose.
However, “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World” by David Epstein is definitely worth reading. Inside, you will certainly find a lot of ideas and facts that will resonate with your experience and give you more courage to pursue this ideal that I advocate in this blog.
