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.
