Cultivating Range in Your Life

The Tiger Error.

We might soon see that phrase hitting modern lexicon. It’s an acknowledgment that a recently developed and well-argued theory may now be proving defunct. If you’re familiar with Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success, you’re probably familiar with the 10,000-hour rule.

The rule basically says specialize early and practice relentlessly. Tiger Woods epitomizes this argument, where we see him as a golf prodigy at two years old, and then winning an astonishing batch of majors early in his career. Similar comparisons exist for Mozart, Michael Phelps, Garry Kasparov, and the like. The advice is simple: be absolutely unyielding in acquiring a particular skill early on and then go dominate in that field. Given the rule’s popularity and our widespread societal focus on “getting expert”, it seems that the 10,000-hour rule should apply to most aspects of life, right? Not so fast.

In Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, author David Epstein essentially tears this theory apart, and shows how early specialization only works in a small minority of cases. Those exceptions, like golf and chess, prove true when the environments are highly-structured, predictable, and stable, allowing for narrow specialization to prosper.

In contrast, the “range” argument that Epstein touts encourages people to forgo early specialization, and instead learn broadly and develop a wide array of conceptual models. He argues this leads to far more cases of “success” in the long run. In business terms, rather than climbing a very specific career “ladder”, progress is more like climbing a jungle gym, where the person zig-zags across the bars to eventually reach the top.

Interesting? It’s worth unpacking this concept a bit more.

The argument for broad experiences

“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but often times better than a master of one”

Interleaving is a practice where a person intentionally mixes different subjects to improve their overall learning. This goes against the grain of modern education systems and typical career paths that systematically guide us down narrow, one-way streets. On the contrary, interleaving is more like traveling down an eight-lane highway, moving from one lane to another, but still in an overall direction.

The idea is to go through life using a compass, not a map.

Orient yourself toward playing the long game. Developing a passion (finding a “why” and gaining mastery) requires deliberate effort and time. It doesn’t happen overnight. But realize your passions will likely change over time, and that’s a great thing. You owe it to yourself to dive deep and apply yourself to a topic, and then when you feel that “pull”, move to the next. For me, I’m on a philosophy kick right now – I’m having fun dissecting eastern and western philosophical branches and seeing how I can practice tidbits each day to be my best self and really help others. Right now, Stoicism is teaching me how to both anticipate and engage adversity daily, and I’m feeling much more capable and at peace because of it. I can’t wait to see what my next lane change will be.

Moving laterally across a spectrum of diverse topics over time develops range. And with that, we’re able to mix and apply specific skill combinations for specific contexts. Context matters. Without important and specific situations to apply skills, what good are they? Here are a few examples of skill mash-ups based on contextual needs:

• Making smart and enduring business partnership connections: Take the concept of an ecosystem (from biology), which describes the dynamic transfer of materials between organisms in a given environment, where they need one another to survive and serve their purpose. Analogically, use this systems thinking idea to model out the full array of potential interfaces you could have in your business and gauge where the most valuable fits are. Think broadly. Then, figure out the options you have for creating formal and informal interconnections that serve you and those potential partners. It’s one sprawling network, and you can’t afford to think narrowly.
• Convincing an angel investor to fund your startup company: Begin with empathy (deeply embracing the investor’s viewpoint and interests) to establish the right rapport. From there, draw on your storytelling skillset: carefully conforming an emotionally-charged narrative (coupled with curated data) that articulates a compelling vision. Finally, use your business acumen to devise an appealing offer (in the form of an investment request).
• Ensuring talented engineers are fulfilled in their work experience: It starts with understanding your people on an individual basis and analyzing cultural sentiment. Then, think through the environmental characteristics that’ll boost the situation over time (e.g., technical trainings, flexible work situations, a “flatter” organization, giving people a bigger voice in strategic decisions), leading to improved retention and inflow of great talent. Finally, infuse a people analytics capability that gives you measurable understanding (qualitative and quantitative) that helps you understand progress.

Crafting an intentional many-model journey

“You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience – both vicarious and direct – on this latticework of models.” (Charlie Munger)

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And, as Seth Godin notes, our world of niches is running out of nails. Accumulating range over time keeps us valuable and relevant. Professor Scott Page nails this idea with his notion that we must all strive to be many-model thinkers. Deliberate acquisition of numerous conceptual models gives us the ability to flexibly dance across abstract and fluid situations.

Take Moravec’s paradox: a principle articulated in the 1980s that says humans and machines frequently have opposite strengths and weaknesses. Generally, we humans are well-suited for higher-order and abstract reasoning, while machines are best-equipped for low-level, large-volume computation and analysis. Understand: as the machines get more capable, we need to “level up” our cognitive abilities and stay relevant by being even more proficient in abstract and strategic thinking.

Getting there requires struggle, even more so than repetition. You know that feeling when you pick up a thick, densely-worded book and you feel exhausted after engaging the content for even just a few pages? Given your aim is right, that’s a mental workout worth having. Depth of thought makes it hard to read Shakespeare or Machiavelli, and that’s exactly the reason it’s worth it in the end.

Coming full circle, developing range gives us – as individuals and organizations – a scientifically-proven advantage in this world. Be curious and go wide in your learning and apply those skills to help them stick. I’ll leave you with this video where David Epstein and Malcom Gladwell came together at the 2019 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, where Gladwell publicly stated he’s changed his mind (kudos to him!) about the 10,000-hour rule being the sole predictor of success; that the rule generally isn’t true except in hyper-specific situations (see the exact moment here). It’s a great example of challenging one another to make the world better and keeping an open mind.

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