Range (David Epstein)

There is no master key to unlock all doors!

With several locks to open in life, one key may not suffice!

My top-3 learnings from this book:

1. Specialize. But not so fast. Experimentation is by no means sexy — it’s a painful, long drawn process — but the chances of a supernova success is higher (assuming you are in pursuit of one) when you experiment and figure out who you are and what you like before specializing. It’s natural to see others in our circles specialize early in life and feel left behind but “Don’t see yourself as against someone else. Remember, you are going somewhere else.”
2. Quit fast and quit often. In one of the earlier books I read and shared about (Grit by Angela Duckworth), the author talks about the need for persistence. This book does a concept clarification on the topic — under what scenarios do you exercise Grit and under what do you quit. Grit kicks is once we decide our area of specialization but not in the experimentation phase — let’s say you are trying out a career in what appears to be an area of interest and it doesn’t work out, there is no shame in quitting and trying something else. Don’t be gritty for the sake of it and fall into the trap of specializing in a domain that may not be “yours”.
3. Drop your familiar tools. In schools, colleges, and workplaces we are trained to approach a problem in a certain way. A project manager for instance may be fixated on the levers of quality, time, and cost and just look at any problem from those 3 angles. In an emergency, these trained behaviors come to the fore and many-a-times, such a response does the job. But one may encounter scenarios that require you to drop your familiar tools and pick up new ones instead — this doesn’t come naturally to most of us. So next time you are confronted with a situation, try to ask yourself “How else can I solve this problem?” and the else needs to be quite radically different from what you would normally do. Specializing too soon means the choices of else becomes fewer and fewer. More experiences through experimentation allow you to view the problem from from multiple previously undiscovered angles.

DISCLAIMER: One should be careful to not use this book as an excuse for not specializing. That’s not the point of the book either — all it says is try different things and understand who you are before settling in.