Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
David Epstein
Top 10 Best Quotes
“If we treated careers more like dating, nobody would settle down so quickly.”
“Their findings about who these people are should sound familiar by now: "high tolerance for ambiguity"; "systems thinkers"; "additional technical knowledge from peripheral domains"; "repurposing what is already available"; "adept at using analogous domains for finding inputs to the invention process"; "ability to connect disparate pieces of information in new ways"; "synthesizing information from many different sources"; "they appear to flit among ideas"; "broad range of interests"; "they read more (and more broadly) than other technologists and have a wider range of outside interests"; "need to learn significantly across domains"; "Serial innovators also need to communicate with various individuals with technical expertise outside of their own domain.”
“First act and then think...We discover the possibilities by doing, by trying new activities, building new networks, finding new role models." We learn who we are in practice, not in theory.”
“We fail...tasks we don't have the guts to quit."...knowing when to quit is such a strategic advantage that every single person, before undertaking an endeavor should enumerate conditions under which they should quit.”
“mental meandering and personal experimentation are sources of power, and head starts are overrated”
“Seeding the soil for generalists and polymaths who integrate knowledge takes more than money. It takes opportunity.”
“We learn who we are only by living, and not before.”
“...problem solving "begins with the typing of the problem."..."a problem well put is half-solved.”
“The average expert was a horrific forecaster. Their areas of specialty, years of experience, academic degrees, and even (for some) access to classified information made no difference. They were bad at short-term forecasting, bad at long-term forecasting, and bad at forecasting in every domain. When experts declared that some future event was impossible or nearly impossible, it nonetheless occurred 15 percent of the time. When they declared a sure thing, it failed to transpire more than one-quarter of the time.”
“Specialization is obvious: keep going straight. Breadth is trickier to grow.”
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Book Keywords:
specialization, career-path, inspirational-life, experimentation, range, dating, career
