Compare yourself to yourself yesterday, not to younger people who aren’t you
🖊️書名：Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
🖊️作者 ：Epstein, David
🖊️出版社：Riverhead Books
An absolutely “wicked” journey for me but I enjoyed it and felt like I had an information overload after finishing each chapter. Who knew that so many case studies and anecdotes could support having breadth vs. depth of knowledge?! The author of course nods to the fact that it is important to have both kinds of people (generalists and specialists), but his views are against the thinking that we have been aware of from a young age and keep at it.
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For many years we have been told that specialization in a certain area, while foregoing most or all others, is the key to success, The theories such as the 10,000 hours rule. But people who have the hubris to dream of something bigger, change the status quo. Learning should becomes voluntary, in sense of that you are learning into it and want to learn it. And learning deeply means learning slowly. The cult of the head start fails the learners it seek to serve. However, frustration is not a sign that you aren’t learning, but staying at idle is the sign you aren’t learning.
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One of my favorite quotes is, hypothetically speaking, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is what we say, 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. That is how talented people discover their gifts in spite of how many times they failed. They would still make it eventually.
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Epstein’s perspectives literally give me different ways to review the values I stand for. As someone who enjoys working across teams, learning new things, and sees contextual information critical to doing my job, I appreciate his views on the importance of having people look across all projects to identify systematic issues. This is something I truly feel companies don’t value enough, and even though I’ve advocated for it myself, it’s not something I’ve often been encouraged to do.
