Hey, I told you this is a great book, right? Well, I got to read you these passages because they’re just fantastic and very inspiring. Let’s see.
Told in retrospect for popular media, stories of innovation and self-discovery can look like orderly journeys from A to B. Sort of like how inspirational snippet accounts of the journeys of elite athletes appear straightforward, but the stories usually get murkier when examined in depth or over time. The popular notion of the Tiger path (specialization early) minimizes the role of detours, breadth, and experimentation. It is attractive because it is a tidy prescription, low on uncertainty and high on efficiency. After all, who doesn’t like a head start? Experimentation is not a tidy prescription, but it is common and it has advantages, and it requires more than the typical motivational poster lip service to a tolerance for failure. Breakthroughs are high variance.
Okay. Now the other one that I really loved is this one. Okay.
Don’t feel behind. … Compare yourself to yourself yesterday, not to younger people who aren’t you. Everyone progresses at a different rate, so don’t let anyone else make you feel behind. You probably don’t even know where exactly you’re going, so feeling behind doesn’t help. Instead, as Herminia Ibarra suggested for the proactive pursuit of match quality, start planning experiments. Your personal version of Friday night or Saturday morning experiments (referenced earlier in the book) perhaps.
Approach your own personal voyage and projects like Michelangelo approached a block of marble, willing to learn and adjust as you go, and even to abandon a previous goal and change directions entirely should the need arise. Research on creators in domains from technological innovation to comic books shows that a diverse group of specialists cannot fully replace the contributions of broad individuals. Even when you move on from an area of work or an entire domain, that experience is not wasted.
I’m here to tell you that is absolutely true. Absolutely, I agree 100%.
Finally, remember that there is nothing inherently wrong with specialization. We all specialize to one degree or another, at some point or other. My initial spark of interest in this topic came from reading viral articles and watching conference keynotes that offered offered early hyperspecialization as some sort of life hack, a prescription that will save you the wasted time of diverse experience and experimentation. I hope I have added ideas to that discussion, because research in myriad areas suggests that mental meandering and personal experimentation are sources of power, and head starts are overrated. As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a century ago, of the free exchange of ideas, “It is an experiment as all life is an experiment.”
There he said it, and I agree and I hope you’ll take hope and inspiration from those thoughts. Thank you and I will talk to you later.
PS: You can buy the ebook from this retailer.
You can also buy it in print from my online bookstore and support indie bookstores.