Range - Book Review

Range - Book Review

A masterpiece by?David Epstein. A MUST buy & must-read.

What's stunning:

• The reversal of 'deeply ingrained' concepts in the world such as "specialise or super specialise; start early, only use data (I'm a culprit), correlation of early age & success & the curse of trying too many things". This book proves that all these hypotheses have an alternative.

Mark Zuckerberg famously noted that “young people are just smarter.” And yet a tech founder who is fifty years old is nearly twice as likely to start a blockbuster company as one who is thirty, and the thirty-year-old has a better shot than a twenty-year-old

• Compelling real stories & cases. The ones I found fascinating: Van Gogh's spectacular timeline; The blunder at Nasa (over-dependence on data), the shocking cases of fireman 'not dropping their tools' even to survive.

A recent study found that cardiac patients were actually less likely to die if they were admitted during a national cardiology meeting, when thousands of cardiologists were away; the researchers suggested it could be because common treatments of dubious effect were less likely to be performed.

• The deep study on why 'quitting is NOT bad'.
• The Case Study on "To Race or Not" is spectacular. It brings out one of the biggest reasons we all fail...(won't spoil it here).
• The larger point of what succeeds. RANGE means a large spectrum of thinking, people, counter views & the larger point that 'everything doesn't have to fit' into neat places. There is glory in not being perfect or prepared or early.

Nobel laureates are at least twenty-two times more likely to partake as an amateur actor, dancer, magician, or other type of performer.

• Parents - please read this book to understand that you NEED NOT 'curate' & plan your kids' lives minutely & fret if they WANDER. It may be good for them.

“I feel sorry for the people who know exactly what they’re going to do from the time they’re sophomores in high school,” he said. In his memoir, Knight (founder of Nike) wrote that he “wasn’t much for setting goals,” and that his main goal for his nascent shoe company was to fail fast enough that he could apply what he was learning to his next venture. He made one short-term pivot after another, applying the lessons as he went.

• PricewaterhouseCoopers that studied technological innovation over a decade found that there was no statistically significant relationship between R& D spending and performance.* (Save for the bottom 10 percent of spenders, which did perform worse than their peer companies.)

“Forecasts of dollar-euro exchange rates are worthless.”

And to conclude "Compare yourself to yourself yesterday, not to younger people who aren’t you."

All book notes - https://www.goodreads.com/notes/43984397-range/88044824-alok-kejriwal