Enlightenment Now - Steven Pinker

(Also Sapiens :)

Range - David Epstein

Range is a great book! I really enjoyed reading it, it is a worthwhile read which expands your line of thinking.

I definitely also recommend Barking Up The Wrong Tree, it goes hand in hand with Range, books which challenge our way of thinking and what success is or what the correlation is.

Highly recommend to read this book:

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

The author went on lots of Podcast shows, you can start from there before you spend any $.

In that case read the book "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" from that list first. You will notice that the people that came up with solutions came from a total different discipline, while the people in that field were stuck

There is a book "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" which claims there are domain-specific problems that are more likely to be solved by people originally outside that domain.

Range is a very interesting book. Has a generalist I felt inadequate for a long time when I was younger (the pressure being find a domain and stick with it).
I wish I had read something like this 10 years ago.

to answer this question we have to ask what smart even means.

if it means you can "figure stuff out at work" congrats, you can follow instructions in a structured, specialist environment.

to become legitimately "rich", however, in most cases you have to own part of a business.

and in the world of entrepreneurship, you have to be much more of a generalist, as there are 10 different factors (sales, product, timing, pricing) you must all get right.

I can virtually guarantee you the best person at math in the world is not rich, because they have gone full specialist to get to that point, and therefore cannot succeed outside of an extremely structured environment.

"Range, Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein is a great book on this topic.

Book - Range by David Epstein - covers this topic really well. The book shows how expanding into neighboring areas increases your performance in your chosen field itself.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PHLNR28/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

Okay, here are a few thoughts in no partcular order:

- finding a job is awful. Networking is key -- but read that as 'spending time with other people doing interesting things leads to opportunities'. Consider attending or hosting meetups, or going to/presenting at conferences.

- Programming is a lot more than knowing a particular library or language, and good companies realize this. At its core, it is the problem solving skills and getting things done, and you haven't programmed in that many languages without learning to do that.

- Consider contributing to an open-source project. It may be a great way to 'unrust' your skills.

- Consider taking further education; there are distance universities or online universities (ex. http://www.cvu-uvc.ca/ -- should be something similar where you are from). edX has great courses; there is OpenCourseware, Udemy, etc.

- Two books I'd like to recommend: "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport, and "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein.

Good luck.

I read Range by David Epstein a few months ago. He makes the case that you shouldn't try to have a "5 year plan." You should just be prepared to adapt to whatever opportunities/challenges come your way, or allow yourself to pursue things you discover you like.

David Epstein's Range [0] is a great look into this seeming paradox of broad v. deep. The intro chapters of Tiger Woods with golf versus Roger Federer with tennis are the thesis: There are 'kind' learning environments and 'unkind' learning environments.

'Kind' learning environments are golf, chess, SAT prep, etc. Here, you just need to grind out the hours. The feedback is fairly quick and the objective is clear. You should specialize early on to grind out the time, like Tiger Woods.

'Unkind' learning environments are tennis, jazz, business, etc. Here you need a lot of general information to see weak patterns. You need to borrow from other domains and read a lot of unconnected stuff. The feedback is not timely and the objective is not clear. You should 'graze' on a lot of other things to become 'elite' in your chosen field. Roger Federer played a lot of sports before choosing tennis 'late' in life.

The book is very detailed yet readable, a great targeting at a general audience. The section on music is fascinating reading.

Generalist or specialist bents are both good ideas, but it depends on the environment.

[0] https://davidepstein.com/the-range/

You need to look into the book 'Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World' as it might boost your spirit a bit and also give you some ideas.

You can do any 'job'. If you have communication skills you are particularly well-suited to be a leader coordinating a team of specialists, connecting them and finding value in the overlap of their specialities.

Most of the people are too narrow now in my opinion. It is your great advantage that you can see a bigger picture than an overspecialized PHP Developer for example.

I also read Range and I too was a bit underwhelmed. I took it as a sign that I’ve read too much in this area already as much of the book was familiar. It would probably be a good introduction for those who haven’t read about the topic before.

I keep telling people that 2020 is our chance to both address the lousy situation many are in, and to recognize what is truly important in our lives. The fact that many people did in fact have a very lousy year and you did not also falls into that category. Why do you think your year was not lousy, and what can we learn from it?

Range by David Epstein [0].

It's a good middle point on the understanding of 'mastery' that Gladwell started in the late oughts and whose meme of '10k hours' kinda infected a lot of pop-psych and MBAs. Epstein argues that there are areas where 10k hours work, but limits very much exist. His thesis is that you have to know your environment and that most environments are too chaotic for just grinding out hours. A larger Range of knowledge/experience is likely a better strategy for many areas of life.

I gave copies of the book out as a thank you note/gift after an interview, as I think the book is really good and that the firm could get something out of reading it; that even if they did not hire me, it would help them.

I know that's a bit looney, but it worked. I got my dream job and a hefty pay raise, great benefits, and a short commute.

Literally, the book changed my life.

[0] https://www.davidepstein.com/the-range/

Oh wow is this a trait? I had an adult ADHD diagnosis a few years ago, but not much has come of it since (still struggling with "typical" work arrangements).

In fact I just interviewed with a company today where I expressed my resistance being pigeonholed in my own words.

Speaking of being a generalist, the book "Range" by David Epstein gave me some hope.

Sure.

No. 1. "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" by Robert M. Sapolsky.

No. 2. "The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator" by Timothy C. Winegard.

No. 3. "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" by Gregory Zuckerman.

No. 4. "Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity" by Jamie Metzl.

No. 5. "Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do" by Jennifer L. Eberhardt.

No. 6. "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein.

No. 7. "The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War" by Ben Macintyre.

No. 8. "Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion" by Jia Tolentino.

No. 9. "Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know" by Malcolm Gladwell.

No. 10. "Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence," by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb.

David Epstein's Range has a lot to say about this topic. Carmack's idea of 'deep' work [0] is environmentally dependent. It works for him and for the places he has been at. But it is not a universal rule for learning in all environments.

Epstein uses Tiger Woods and Roger Federer as his headline case, but goes into many other forms of learning. Woods' golf is a kind learning environment; the rules are clear, the feedback is quick, the skills are straightforward. Federer's tennis is an unkind learning environment; the rules aren't as clear, the feedback isn't as quick, and the skills are more murky. A lot of tennis is the mind-game aspect and in elite tennis, you don't get the same person very often.

With programming and development, the environment Carmack talks about is a kind learning environment (rules are stated, feedback is a compile away, skills are practicable). Contrast this to the business/marketing people whose environment is unkind (unclear rules, long feedback cycles, skill overload).

Epstein relates the method to be great at a thingy is to know what environment you are in. This gives the keys to success. In kind learning environments like programming, golf, or chess, the key is practice and drilling, to do it until you can't be bad anymore. In unkind learning environments like tennis, jazz, or marketing, the key is to learn as many things as you can as broadly as you can, to gain a reservoir of ideas to use.

[0] not Cal Newport's idea of 'deep work', to be clear.

For further in-depth reading, I recommend the book "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World". It explores the generalist vs specialist dichotomy within various fields (e.g. sports, music, engineering) and compares the successes and contributions between the two. As you might guess from the title, the book reaches a very similar conclusion - for spaces involving unstructured problem solving such as engineering, breadth lends itself better to creativity and achieving breakthroughs.

"Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst"
https://www.amazon.com/Behave-Biology-Humans-Best-Worst/dp/0...

"The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator"
https://www.amazon.com/Mosquito-Human-History-Deadliest-Pred...

"The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution"
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Solved-Market-Revolution/dp/0...

"Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity"
https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Darwin-Genetic-Engineering-Hu...

"Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do"
https://www.amazon.com/Biased-Uncovering-Hidden-Prejudice-Sh...

"Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World"
https://www.amazon.com/Range-Generalists-Triumph-Specialized...

"The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War"
https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Traitor-Greatest-Espionage-Story/...

"Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion"
https://www.amazon.com/Trick-Mirror-Self-Delusion-Jia-Tolent...

"Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know"
https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Strangers-Should-about-People...

"Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence"
https://www.amazon.com/Prediction-Machines-Economics-Artific...

Also mentioned in the book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

The book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
by David Epstein https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41795733-range argues a lot for this as well, and goes on to discuss numerous examples where generalists have made the breakthroughs and/or excelled in some way, due to synergy, overlap and inspiration.

Utterly banal content marketing discussion of the books which goes on and on but says very little.

The books are:

Range - David Epstein

Nine Lies About Work - Marcus Buckingham / Ashley Goodall

Loonshots - Safi Bahcall

His fluffily meaningless takeaways which apparently bind the three books and are a common theme:

How can I be better at solving hard problems? Take a bigger view!

How can I work better with those around me? Trust them to share their knowledge and use that knowledge differently.

How can I bring new things into the world? Hold the innovation and the delivery in equal regard, give each what it needs, and think hard about what your organization rewards.

You should read the book Range by David Epstein. He talks about how generalists can make an impact due to bringing solutions from multiple fields together, often in ways that specialists can't see due to being in the field too long (they lack the "beginner's mind") or just don't have such a breadth of experiences. Here's a HN discussion about the book: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20094242

The bigger thing is the convince employers of this fact, however, which most people won't understand to be true. Instead, therefore, of making just one big resume with all of your experiences, make resumes for disparate fields: full stack resume will only contain full stack experience; same for data science, devops, and so on. This will make you seem like a specialist. Don't lie but don't downplay your experience as well.

Check out the book “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World” by David Epstein for why generalists actually have better outcomes than specialists, even at specialized tasks.

Intuitively, I think this makes sense. Imagine skill as a logarithmic function with the x axis being time. Every unit of work you put in to train starts becoming less and less efficient. By training in different skills you are making more efficient use of your training time. And even if the skills appear to be orthogonal to see each, there’s definitely a cross training effect, for both mental and physical tasks.

A good example is programming. For longer than I care to admit I was one of those guys who could code but wasn’t that strong in math. I was frustrated because it felt like I wasn’t getting better. I decided to strongly focus on math, started exercising, and did brain training with dual n-back tests to increase my fluid intelligence.

I was pleasantly surprised that all these unrelated activities boosted my programming ability to a significant degree, in a comparatively marginal amount of time.

Thanks.

Pretty much all books gives you something or the other to learn. I started writing about the books I read, each year, since 2018. For this year, here are few, in no particular order that I feel happy and fulfilled reading them. I will be digging deeper and doing a retrospective, and write a blog post by early 2021.

- Cant't hurt me by David Goggins.

- Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.

- Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. (Re-read)

- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford. A very un-assuming book that taught me lot about leadership.

- How to influence and win friends (re-read 3rd or 4th time).

- Humble Inquiry by Edgar Schein.

- I am Malala (daughter like it and so I read it)

- Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Issacson. (I'm taking this real slow, still reading after 6+ months.)

- Range (the one mentioned by Bill Gates)

- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.

- The Future is Asian by Parag Khanna.

- Turn the Ship Around.

- Under Pressure by Lisa Damour (I have a daughter, turning teenager in another year.)

- Venture Deals (still valid in today's fund raising scenes)

- Why we Sleep by Matthew Walker. Still reading but learning a lot already.