Book Summary-Range by David Epstein
20 takeaways from the book Range-How generalist triumph in a specialized world
3 min readDec 26, 2020
- When trying to solve a problem or estimating effort, try the outsider approach, try to distance yourself from the nitty-gritty of things.
- When trying to solve an unknown problem think of analogies but not only from the same domain. Eg Why are potholes round: Think about other round things, eg Why is pizza round and the pizza box square.
- Try to identify patterns in things around you, you remember things better in Chunks. For things that are easy to replicate and repeat themselves.
- Always follow an approach that would lead to better results in the future even if it’s slow, eg Try to understand things from the first principle basis, even if rote learning might be faster.
- Not everything can be learned by trying to understand patterns as most things and events around us are random, unlike a piece of chess which can move only according to a set of rules.
- Learn a wide range of subjects throughout your life, this will help you even if you want to become a specialist.
- Dots of information are useless if you don’t have the ability to connect those dots.
- Try to understand the deep structure of the problem before trying to solve it.
- Match Quality- The connection between who you are and what you do(can do, want to do) is a really important factor to consider when you think about your career and in general.
- Specialize later in your career, explore more in the beginning. Learning stuff is less important than learning about yourself
- Takes more grit to quit than continue-Sunk Cost fallacy-not stoping to do something because of the time and resources you have invested in the activity up till a given point will be wasted
- Do short-term planning but long-term thinking- nothing is more important in the current scenario.
- Keep learning from your experiences and be prepared, keep an open mind, and absorb like a sponge. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
- End of History Illusion: We accept how much we have changed over the years, but think we won’t change much in the future.
- Context Principle: You react to the same situation in similar ways, but different situations in different ways, eg you might be an extrovert among a smaller group and introvert among a larger group, context matters when trying to understand a person
- We learn who we are only by living and not before-First act and then think, we can only know what will happen when we actually do something. Test and learn not to plan and implement
- Premature Optimization: Instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations. Momentum is underrated.
- Test and Learn >>>>plan and implement- I know who I am when I see what I do
- Being a hedgehog(one with a depth of knowledge in one field) and not learning from your opponents (people with dissimilar viewpoints) hampers your ability to predict. Be a fox(with knowledge in wider areas) learn from your opponents, be ready to say I was wrong, and learn.
- Use Reasoning when data can’t give you direct answers. Don’t follow the playbook blindly. Reasoning can be better than rational at times.
