A Conversation With "Range" Author David Epstein

Moreover, our culture of specialization conflicts with something most of us intuitively recognize, but which career advisers are only beginning to understand: we each have multiple selves. … We have complex, multi-faceted experiences, interests, values and talents, which might mean that we could also find fulfillment as a web designer, or a communi... See more

So in this post I’m going to reject the commonly accepted wisdom and look at why specializing is hard, why it fails and what an alternative path looks like. The answer lies in developing strong opinions and a distinctive vibe.

we can explore and exploit in parallel: become a jack of all trades, and a master of one. Or we can do it serially: lots of successful careers look like an initial period of exploration, followed by going deep on one thing for several years, then an exploration phase in an adjacent field, and so on. There is still a trade-off between these states,

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