Is early specialization better, or should you have some range in your experience before you hone in on the thing you end up doing? That’s the question that Epstein explores in Range.
I read this in 2019 and continue to come back to the ideas found here, specifically that early specialization seems to get you ahead, but many people leave their early specialization field because it was a bad match fit. Thus those that waited a few years, maybe even into their 30’s, to find something to do for their lives end up ahead because they don’t switch careers.
Those with greater experience also have a much higher chance of making good decisions in the face of hard things, as discussed in Farsighted. If you want to have the worst possible outcome, get a bunch of similar people in a room to make a decision. Specifically, get a bunch of middle aged white dudes of similar economic backgrounds, and you’ll be on the right track to find the worst possible decision.
Range found the same thing in science, the teams that did the most cutting edge research had members with the biggest variance in backgrounds. Few of them just became scientists, they worked other jobs first and then became scientists.
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