Reviews tagging 'Death'

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein

1 review

bluejayreads's review against another edition

Go to review page

hopeful informative slow-paced

4.75

 I am less than a quarter-century old, and I have a lot of experiences. I've published short stories in literary magazines, danced ballet en pointe, founded two businesses, and tried and left four religions. I'm teaching myself herbalism, Arabic, violin, and major world religions, and my resume includes a CNA license, forklift experience, website design and coding, and starting and running a commercial farm. But I couldn't be called an expert in anything, or even more than an advanced beginner in most things. 

In short, I'm a generalist. And since I was old enough to realize I didn't have a single unequivocal answer to "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I've felt like I'm behind. I have not spent my entire life devoted to a single area of knowledge, I chose my college degree specifically because it was general and I could do almost anything with it, and my interests are so disparate that I can't focus on just one thing without ignoring whole categories of things I enjoy. 

I provide all this context not just because I like talking about myself, but to give some context for the emotional connection I felt towards this book. The main idea of Range is that early specialization does help for some fields, like chess, but for many areas, a "sampling period" where you try a bunch of different and unrelated things and specializing later once you find (through trial and error) what really speaks to you results in better creativity and skill in your field of specialization. And the book backs it up with hundreds of pages of studies and examples of late specialization leading to amazing skill, from Roger Federer to Vincent Van Gogh. 

Range definitely isn't perfect. Some of the examples meander until I lost the point or only seem tangentally relevant, the epilogue was almost entirely unnecessary, and I think it could stand to be at least 50 pages shorter. But I was very forgiving of all of that while reading because it told me I'm not hopelessly behind and gave me the science to prove it. If you are a generalist, feel like you're behind and won't ever catch up because you haven't been practicing a skill since age three, or still don't know what you want to be when you grow up even though you officially are "grown up," this book will be an incredibly valuable read. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
More...