reggiewoods's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
The theme of Range is simple, people with diverse experience typically have greater contributions to the world, even though the modern world has become exponentially structured around hyper-specialization. I’m sure there is criticism of Range because of the large percentage of anecdotes used to illustrate Epstein’s thesis, but that is exactly what makes it fun to read. Like many, I fall into the “Jack of all trades, master of none” type and have constantly felt the pressure to find my field to specialize in so I could succeed. Range alleviated a lot of that guilt and anxiety by providing example after example of people having success in a myriad of different fields who were all “late starters.” Epstein calls out our University system and the business world for churning out increasingly narrow-minded experts who don’t have the means to think outside the box. I don’t consider this a self-help book because it does not really tell you how to succeed so much as how many people have found success. There is some advice for parents included, and a call for change (mainly recognizing the value of generalists), but mostly I found it to be an entertaining read of mini-bios of successful people, both historical and modern (famous and not), supported by references to scientific studies. While the worlds shove stories of child prodigies down your throat, Range tells you about the ones who changed careers later and life and then were able to change the world, which they could not have done without their previous experience.
ryangoodyear's review against another edition
5.0
I'm going with a full 5 stars--this was a really fresh read for me. It covered a lot of ground I hadn't seen before (perhaps it's out there and I just never to find it) as well as provided contrary looks at ground covered by other pop-sci books. It also put terms and data to things I have experienced in my collection of hobbies and interests. Really enlightening all around.
Broadly speaking, it looks at how hyper-specialization is a compelling story. To borrow from the conclusion: “Told in retrospect for popular media, stories of innovation and self-discovery can look like orderly journeys from A to B.” But is not only not the predominate predictor of world-class success, but also impedes the way work gets done in some domains. the book explores the artists and scientists who made their contributions only by combining many different areas that they had explored (but not specialized in) during their lives.
My gems:
Ch1
“AI systems are like savants.” They need stable structures and narrow worlds.
“Cognitive entrenchment”
Ch 2
--“Flynn’s great disappointment is the degree to which society, and particularly higher education, has responded to the broadening of the mind by pushing specialization, rather than focusing early training on conceptual, transferable knowledge.”...“interdisciplinary critical thinking”
--“Mostly, though, students get what economist Bryan Caplan called narrow vocational training for jobs few of them will ever have. Three quarters of American college graduates go on to a career unrelated to their major...after having become competent only with the tools of a single discipline.”
“Fermi problems”
Ch 3
--“The psychologists highlighted the variety of paths to excellence, but the most common was a sampling period, often lightly structured with some lessons and a breadth of instruments and activities, followed only later by a narrowing of focus, increased structure, and an explosion of practice volume.”
--‘The jazz musician is a creative artist, the classical musician is a re-creative artist.”
--Suzuki method mimics natural language acquisition.
--“Parents with creative children make their opinions known after their kids did something they didn’t like, they just did not proscribe it beforehand.”
Ch 4
--“If the teacher didn’t already turn the work into using-procedures practice, well-meaning parents will. They aren’t comfortable with bewildered kids, and they want understanding to come quickly and easily. But for learning that is both durable and flexible, fast and easy is precisely the problem.”
“Desirable difficulties”
“Generation effect” - Being forced to generate answers improves subsequent learning even if the generated answer is wrong.
--There are a lot of modern advertisements for learning without scientific backing. Learning strategies that have scientific backing make up a very short list, including spacing, testing, and using making-connection questions
Ch 5
--use lots of analogies and make them seemingly disconnected from the current field of focus
--positive feedback loops
--“Successful problem solves are more able to determine the deep structure of a problem before they process to match a strategy to it.”
--“A problem well-put is half-solved.
--Discusses Johannes Kepler’s contributions to science
Ch 6
--explores Van Gogh’s meandering professional life
--“The willingness to jettison a project or an entire area of study for a better fit” is an important skill
--stay “attuned to whether switching is simply a failure of perseverance, or astute recognition that better matches are available”
--Army learned that dangling money didn’t help retain junior officers, but allowing them more control over match fit did.
--“One of the compelling aspects of sports goals is how straightforward and easily measurable they are.”
Ch 7
--study of how Frances Hesselbein tripled minority membership in Girl Scouts
--Phil Knight knew he wanted to be a pro athlete. When he realized he wasn’t good enough, he shifted to find a way to stay involved in sports.
--Darwin bounced around and took an unpaid internship gap year on the HMS Beagle
--“The most momentous personality changes occur between ages 18 and one’s late twenties, so specializing early is a task of predicting match quality for a person who does not yet exist.”
--“If you get someone in a context that suits them, they’ll more likely work hard and it will look like grit from the outside.”
--premature optimization
Ch 9
--Specialist inventors skyrocketed after WWII, peaked in 1985, then declined pretty dramatically
“In kind environments, where the goal is to re-create prior performance with as little deviation as possible, teams of specialists work superbly.”
Ch 10
“Narrow experts are an invaluable resource, but you have to understand that they may have blinders on.”...”take facts from them, not opinions.”
“The best forecasters view their own ideas as hypotheses in need of testing.”
Good phrase: “science curious”
Darwin was a fox, Einstein was a hedgehog
Ch 11
--“Is this the data that we want to make the decision we need to make?” - ask this whenever someone simply puts data in front of you.
--At NASA, “reason without numbers was not accepted. In the face of an unfamiliar challenge, NASA managers failed to drop their familiar tools.”
--wildland firefighters lose races with fires when they don’t drop their tools “Dropping one’s tools is a proxy for unlearning, for adaptation, for flexibility.”
“There are fundamentals--scales and chords--that every member must overlearn, but those are just tools for sense-making in a dynamic environment.”
--Cultural congruence has no influence on any measure of corporate success whatsoever.
Ch 12
“An enthusiastic, even childish, playful streak is a recurring theme in research on creative thinkers.”
“Networks that give rise to creative triumph...have porous boundaries between teams.”
“Atypical combination of knowledge” vs.” “conventional combinations of previous knowledge”
Broadly speaking, it looks at how hyper-specialization is a compelling story. To borrow from the conclusion: “Told in retrospect for popular media, stories of innovation and self-discovery can look like orderly journeys from A to B.” But is not only not the predominate predictor of world-class success, but also impedes the way work gets done in some domains. the book explores the artists and scientists who made their contributions only by combining many different areas that they had explored (but not specialized in) during their lives.
My gems:
Ch1
“AI systems are like savants.” They need stable structures and narrow worlds.
“Cognitive entrenchment”
Ch 2
--“Flynn’s great disappointment is the degree to which society, and particularly higher education, has responded to the broadening of the mind by pushing specialization, rather than focusing early training on conceptual, transferable knowledge.”...“interdisciplinary critical thinking”
--“Mostly, though, students get what economist Bryan Caplan called narrow vocational training for jobs few of them will ever have. Three quarters of American college graduates go on to a career unrelated to their major...after having become competent only with the tools of a single discipline.”
“Fermi problems”
Ch 3
--“The psychologists highlighted the variety of paths to excellence, but the most common was a sampling period, often lightly structured with some lessons and a breadth of instruments and activities, followed only later by a narrowing of focus, increased structure, and an explosion of practice volume.”
--‘The jazz musician is a creative artist, the classical musician is a re-creative artist.”
--Suzuki method mimics natural language acquisition.
--“Parents with creative children make their opinions known after their kids did something they didn’t like, they just did not proscribe it beforehand.”
Ch 4
--“If the teacher didn’t already turn the work into using-procedures practice, well-meaning parents will. They aren’t comfortable with bewildered kids, and they want understanding to come quickly and easily. But for learning that is both durable and flexible, fast and easy is precisely the problem.”
“Desirable difficulties”
“Generation effect” - Being forced to generate answers improves subsequent learning even if the generated answer is wrong.
--There are a lot of modern advertisements for learning without scientific backing. Learning strategies that have scientific backing make up a very short list, including spacing, testing, and using making-connection questions
Ch 5
--use lots of analogies and make them seemingly disconnected from the current field of focus
--positive feedback loops
--“Successful problem solves are more able to determine the deep structure of a problem before they process to match a strategy to it.”
--“A problem well-put is half-solved.
--Discusses Johannes Kepler’s contributions to science
Ch 6
--explores Van Gogh’s meandering professional life
--“The willingness to jettison a project or an entire area of study for a better fit” is an important skill
--stay “attuned to whether switching is simply a failure of perseverance, or astute recognition that better matches are available”
--Army learned that dangling money didn’t help retain junior officers, but allowing them more control over match fit did.
--“One of the compelling aspects of sports goals is how straightforward and easily measurable they are.”
Ch 7
--study of how Frances Hesselbein tripled minority membership in Girl Scouts
--Phil Knight knew he wanted to be a pro athlete. When he realized he wasn’t good enough, he shifted to find a way to stay involved in sports.
--Darwin bounced around and took an unpaid internship gap year on the HMS Beagle
--“The most momentous personality changes occur between ages 18 and one’s late twenties, so specializing early is a task of predicting match quality for a person who does not yet exist.”
--“If you get someone in a context that suits them, they’ll more likely work hard and it will look like grit from the outside.”
--premature optimization
Ch 9
--Specialist inventors skyrocketed after WWII, peaked in 1985, then declined pretty dramatically
“In kind environments, where the goal is to re-create prior performance with as little deviation as possible, teams of specialists work superbly.”
Ch 10
“Narrow experts are an invaluable resource, but you have to understand that they may have blinders on.”...”take facts from them, not opinions.”
“The best forecasters view their own ideas as hypotheses in need of testing.”
Good phrase: “science curious”
Darwin was a fox, Einstein was a hedgehog
Ch 11
--“Is this the data that we want to make the decision we need to make?” - ask this whenever someone simply puts data in front of you.
--At NASA, “reason without numbers was not accepted. In the face of an unfamiliar challenge, NASA managers failed to drop their familiar tools.”
--wildland firefighters lose races with fires when they don’t drop their tools “Dropping one’s tools is a proxy for unlearning, for adaptation, for flexibility.”
“There are fundamentals--scales and chords--that every member must overlearn, but those are just tools for sense-making in a dynamic environment.”
--Cultural congruence has no influence on any measure of corporate success whatsoever.
Ch 12
“An enthusiastic, even childish, playful streak is a recurring theme in research on creative thinkers.”
“Networks that give rise to creative triumph...have porous boundaries between teams.”
“Atypical combination of knowledge” vs.” “conventional combinations of previous knowledge”
lsoccer12's review against another edition
3.0
I can see why Malcom Gladwell liked this book.
Lots of real life real people examples, but there was a bit more application given to the principles discussed. I skipped around a bit, but was still able to find interesting chapters and facts. Overall message is very important!
Lots of real life real people examples, but there was a bit more application given to the principles discussed. I skipped around a bit, but was still able to find interesting chapters and facts. Overall message is very important!
emcantey's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5