Overview
This is definitely a book for those who enjoy a more serendipitous existence – those who prefer to read broadly, have many interests, and explore life. Developing what the author David Epstein calls ‘Range’ in the process.
To clarify before going on; David does not attempt to argue against specialisation, only that an increasingly specialised world is magnifying opportunities for those with a more interdisciplinary outlook as well as creating new risks. The world needs both generalists and specialists, and the book argues we shouldn’t be too quick to settle. The message is have a specialty, but also have diversified Interests.
Read on Amazon: Range
Summary Notes
Kind and Unkind Domains
There are two types of domains. Kind domains where there are repetitive patterns and a specialist with narrow skills and experience can excel in recognising patterns they’ve seen before. The second type of domain is the ‘unkind’ variety where there is high uncertainty and new patterns. In these environments narrow experience is more of a hindrance than a help because it creates blind spots.
“Some research shows that the narrower an experts expertise, the more often they get worse with experience at predicting outcomes.” and “In uncertain environments without feedback all the experiences in the world is obsolete.”
The author suggests that in these ‘unkind situations “a generalist or amateur is not held back in the same way.” because they’re not looking for the well-worn patterns the specialist will be looking for.
Abstract Thinking
How you think is more important than narrow domain knowledge:
“In almost all academic subjects broad abstract thinking generally does not improve through school and university that often rewards more concrete specialised knowledge. Out of all the subjects economics fairs best likely because it is already a broad church and economists apply their thinking to all fields.”
Th authors contention here is that abstract thinking is valuable precisely because it allows the generalist to apply knowledge from one area or field and transpose it into another to solve problems or find novel solutions.
Learning Fast & Slow
“Learning is the most efficient in the long run when it is most inefficient in the short run.”
The idea is that learning more abstract lessons and making connections between things is better in the long run than tackling narrow procedural problems. The author cites the example of mathematics where he suggests looking at maths as “a system not a set of disparate mechanisms to get answers.”
The best performers at solving problems are those who first figure out how to categorise problems, then choose a strategy. Those who trained in ‘kind’ environments often try to do it the other way around.
Creativity Depends on Abstract Thinking
The big mistake when trying to solve problems is getting lost in the nitty gritty of the details. The better approach is to ‘stay outside’ of the problem and look for related ideas from other domains.
Abstract thinkers and generalists are at an advantage here because they have ‘wide array of analogies and mental models to call upon.’
“hose who take classes in a range of domains are better at relational thinking and seeing deep structures in disparate problems.”
This helps them solve harder problems later where domain experts often get stuck looking at the problem from the inside out – which is why they’re stuck in the first place.
The Outsider Advantage
You have likely been many people over your lifetime and played many roles and it’s hopeless to predict who you will be decades from now. The lessons here is that we shouldn’t get to attached to a particular identity and this frees us to stay open and curious – traits that often decline with age and experience. We are “malleable vessels for information processing and potentiation.”
“Look at yourself in a probabilistic way. There are many things you could possibly do. There is no single path or grand plan.”
Not only do we not know the person we’ll be in another 10 years, but in the 21st century our current job may not even exist anymore – perhaps taken on by a machine instead. The best is to do now what will give us the ‘best set of exit options later on‘. This is another take on the idea of optionality.
Outside-In Problem Solving
People and organisations get stuck because they often conduct only a ‘local search’ using domain experts and familiar methodology. Searching broadly for a solution to problems outside our discipline is a way to get unstuck.
“Knowledge is a double edge sword. It allows you to do things – but blinds you to other things.”
Problem solving is often constrained by the methodology of the field. This is fine for most problems, but when truly stuck, it makes sense to relax this constraint and look outside.
The world is becomes more specialised. Knowledge which has no natural boundaries is becoming more splinted into fields and sub-fields. This represents an opportunity for generalists and outsiders to make disparate connections between increasingly distant branches of knowledge.
Good Forecasters
Experts are often no better at making predictions than would otherwise be expected from random chance. Part of this problem may be that domain expertise and experience invokes cognitive biases and a disproportionate sense of certainty. However, It is possible to do better than chance. More on this here. The author suggests taking a probabilistic approach to forecasting:
“Try on ideas like Instagram filters – always be asking – okay what if this were the case, what if this assumption was true, what if I were this person or this group…….and so on.”
Good forecasters see their views as hypothesis, and use Bayesian updating to discard or update the probabilities in their hypothesis. “Most cause and effect relationships operate in a wicked environment where these relations are probabilistic not deterministic.”
Deliberate Amateurs
Look at things as an amateur might:
“When you see something that’s been around for a long time you must ask yourself if you can believe that we can’t do better?”
Developing ‘range’ is an uphill battle because in order to get by in the world we must specialise, and it can be hard to justify the resources it takes to develop other interests. It appears inefficient, and the payoff is difficult to measure.
Breakthroughs tend to be ‘high variance events’ where there are a lot of failures before hitting it out of the park.
“Problems arise in both friendly and wicked environments. Where friendly environments are friendly to expert judgement and repetition, wicked environments are filled with uncertainty where applying tried and true strategy often fails.”
Environments with high uncertainty and novel problems favour range and interdisciplinary thinking to find novel solutions.
Conclusion
Overall I would rate this 8 / 10. The book covers a lot of ground and seems to be positioned as an alternative view to other popular books in this genre like ‘grit’ and ‘10,000 hours’. If the snippets here seem like something you would enjoy, check it out on amazon: Range.
If you’ve already read it please let me know your thoughts in the comments.
