16.02.

202 Freie Lektüre 2 Leon Schütz

Range
Compared to the college system in the U.S. our university system is extremely focused on
specialization. While GIF still specializes quite a bit on entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship
itself is general and leaves quite a bit of room for personal interests. On the other hand, you
might worry that you do not become good at anything. Meanwhile your friends are specializing
and getting a head start in medicine, police work or law and you feel like falling behind. So,
after reading So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport, I wondered: How can being a
generalist help me accumulate valuable career capital?

Review
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (Epstein, Range: Why Generalists
Triumph in a Specialized World, 2019) argues how generalists with broad knowledge and
skills succeed while specialization is the norm.

I had the book on my reading list and in my learning contract for quite a while as it hit the
Best Seller lists. But as always, my interest peaked when Bill recommended the book in his
essay We need more Rogers (Gates, 2020), which is a link to the introductory story of the
book about the specialist Tiger Wood and the generalist Roger Federer.

When deciding whether you want to read the book, consider Epstein’s compelling Ted Talk
giving quite a good introduction on the topic (2020).

I can agree to Bill’s point how Epstein writes 95% of the book how generalists are better
than specialists. Nonetheless, in his final paragraph he states that there is nothing wrong
with generalization. Therefore, the reader must keep in mind that the point of the book is to
encourage the reader to follow several paths if he feels like doing so and didn’t find
something, he dreams about specializing in – something I identify myself with.

I can recommend the book to everyone struggling to find their true calling, their passion, you
name it. While this book focuses on the benefits of having a broad skill set, experience and
knowledge, Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You (2012) manifests some core ideas of
building a fulfilling career through gathering relevant skills (career capital) instead of just
doing what you love. Both books combined gave me a good amount of confidence for the
following changes after GIF as they heavily influenced my thinking on career building and the
qualities GIF allowed me to develop.
16.02.202 Freie Lektüre 2 Leon Schütz

Essay: How we as GIF-students thrive and succeed as the generalists we

are
In which I want to explore the advantages of broad practical experience

Generalization as a strategy to protect ourselves from being replaced by a robot

To make this compelling point, Epstein compares the qualities of humans with the qualities
of robots. Humans, on the one hand, have their biggest skill in their ability to integrate
different concepts broadly whereas robots and computers work best in environments with
defined and not-changing rules like chess. This point made me think again: What jobs can
only humans do? My answer: Care-jobs, where the patient benefits from the human-to-
human interaction and as pointed out by Epstein, generalists integrating broad concepts.
This automation is designed to increase unemployment massively but is not necessarily a
bad thing, as I will write about in my essay on the German version of Good Economics for
Hard Times. Anyways, the broader a problem is, the more unique the human contribution
can be. Our greatest strength over robots is the exact opposite of narrow specialization. It is
the ability to integrate broadly.

How specializing early kills career fit and success

“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.”

Shortly before I applied for GIF – only a few weeks after returning from my gap year – I spoke
with a self-employed counselor in regards of my decision what path to follow. He told me, not
to worry too much about choosing the perfect study path as many people choose and find
fulfilling work unrelated to their program. “It is not about what you have studied but that you
studied and thereby show your future boss that you can work yourself into completely new
topics on your own successfully.” As I could not see myself studying law, but socio-
economic/semi-technical programs, this made one hundred percent sense to me. Since then,
I find so many examples for this, wherever I look. When I read the about the author part or
Wikipedia articles about of successful Americans, I am not surprised anymore of
neurosurgeons writing books about life’s meaning or former lawyers writing about
introversion.

This kind of sampling period of great performers is an integral part of their success.

Best learning is slow and hard, so struggling is essential for better long-term performance.
Breadth of training predicts breadth of application since the more contexts something is
learned in, the more the learner models abstractly without relying on examples. They apply
their knowledge to an unfamiliar situation – the essence of creativity. This underlines the
importance of experimenting and trying something new like making several different offers to
a broad variety of potential customers – the essence of Team Academy.
16.02.202 Freie Lektüre 2 Leon Schütz

Increasing the match of education, your job and what you really like
Developing a broad knowledge increases the likelihood of match of skill, need and delight in
your work, as several studies have shown. The benefits of this sweet spot called Ikigai exceed
the loss in depth of skill.

From American perspective, English and Welsh students specialize more in their studies. The
result: In both countries adults are more likely to quit a career they had invested in simply
because they settled too early. This is not a surprise, as American college systems allows
several freely chosen majors at the same time – unthinkable in Germany and Europe.

Thus, I chose GIF (representing generalism) over other more specialized majors. This allows
me to explore different interests while keeping the possibility to specialize later. Having this
practical and broad experience I am confident to be able to connect specialized and theoretical
knowledge to broad practical use cases. And as we learned earlier, this allows even better
learning since I see more practical use cases in the knowledge I acquire.
16.02.202 Freie Lektüre 2 Leon Schütz

The other thing I intuitively knew the author explains is that we change a lot over time,
between age eighteen and our late twenties – right now and soon. Nonetheless, we can see
this change clearly only in our past but believe we will not change much in the future. Thus,
specializing early means predicting the right career match for a person who does not yet exist.

How experts get beaten by laymen

InnoCentive is a platform where experts can post a problem they and their colleagues could
not solve on their own. People from whatever background can see the problems and the
reward for solving them. The interesting finding was: “the further the problem was from the
solver’s expertise, the more likely they were to solve it.” This means: It was neither the
neurosurgeons nor the cardiologists who solved the neurosurgical problems posted but the
designer or the mechanic. This is a common phenomenon called organization blindness many
consultants like shattered.labs try to use to their advantage: “We got the outside
perspective!”

And this is backed up by research: In one study, future events experts declared impossible
nonetheless occurs 15 percent of the time. Sure, events like the next crash did not occur even
more than one-quarter of the time. Nonetheless, you must be careful who is even declared
an expert in such studies: Even though he is an experienced and famous German fonds
manager I would not trust Dirk Müller fantasizing about the next crash even one penny.

The best forecasters are high in active open-mindedness. They are extremely curious, and do
not merely consider contrary ideas, they proactively cross disciplines looking for them.

How specialization is promoted

Interdisciplinary work gets less funding, promotion in prestigious journals, attention on
publication and is yet more likely to become an all-time science classic everyone recites. Best
example: Charles Darwin who dug himself into several disciplines to come with the
revolutionary evolution theory (survival of the fittest) – that shapes our understanding of the
world for centuries.

Final advice
We must compare ourselves to our past selves – and not someone else progressing in a
different, more specialized field at a different speed. Feeling behind does not make any sense,
as most of us, like me, do not even know where exactly we are going. Instead, we experiment
to fit ourselves to a compelling career while building the essential skill of integrating broadly.
16.02.202 Freie Lektüre 2 Leon Schütz

Bibliography
Epstein, D. (2019). Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. New York City:
Riverhead Books.

Epstein, D. (2020, 2). Why specializing early doesn't always mean career success | David
Epstein. Retrieved from TED:
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_why_specializing_early_doesn_t_always_
mean_career_success

Gates, B. (2020, 12 8). We need more Rogers: David Epstein’s Range explains the greatness
of Roger Federer and other generalists. Retrieved from GatesNotes:
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Range

Newport, C. (2012). So Good They Can't Ignore You . New York City: Grand Central
Publishing.