Hi Friends,

I just finished one of my favorite books this year.

Possibly top 10 of all time. During this year, yes during 2020, I have been able to stay active in my reading, and right now I'm at just about 46 books and this one has become one of my favorites. The book I am referring to... Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. Here are three great insights from the book: Different learning environments, the concept of far transfer, and my favorite idea from the book - match quality.

3 Key Insights from Range

Right before I break into the insights of this book, let me give you a bit of background. Epstein is highlighting a very important distinction in a world that values high-levels of specialization. He does not criticize specialization - but he uncovers many of the powers of generalization, key components of life like growth, discover, and creativity that are buried underneath a world that values domain experts. Let's take a look:

1. Know the difference between 'kind' & 'wicked' learning environments.

A kind learning environment is an environment with a set number of parameters & rules. Golf, football, and chess are kind learning environments. How do you grow in a king learning environment? Well, experience and exposure to the patterns of the game are key to improvement. Pile on deliberate practice plus 10,000 hours and you are on your way to success.

A wicked learning environment is an environment that, "the rules of the game are often unclear or incomplete, there may or may not be repetitive patterns and they may not be obvious, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both." In general, most of life and living is a wicked learning environment. The big challenge with wicked environments is that, over time, the wrong signals can be reinforcing the exact wrong lesson.

One key takeaway here: the power of having range is the ability to integrate ideas and knowledge from different domains is a powerful tool in our tool belt. Heck, it's an essential tool that allows people to solve personal problems and global problems, alike.

2. Far Transfer: The ability to broadly connect various fields

In school and much of life, we are taught that hyperspecialization is the path to greatest success. 'Pick and stick' is the way to become successful, as the story goes.

But, people have a very special and overlooked ability: the flexibility to integrate broadly. We can - and should - connect ideas from completely unrelated domains. It is shown that interleaving, the ability for us to match the right strategy to the problem, can improve inductive reasoning dramatically. Often information from completely unrelated fields can solve the most difficult challenges. Take for example the challenge that an amateur solved in a few weeks that NASA struggled with for over 30 years. In the book, Epstein points to 7 different cases where amateurs solved complex problems when experts were stumped by using interleaving.

Seth Godin points out in a TED talk referencing the modern education system that we are often taught to "Collect the dots, not connect the dots."

Integrating information from pschyology to football to learning to organization to animal behavioral patterns has an ability to enrich our life in a way that hyperspecialization cannot. The farther we can transfer ideas and knowledge from one domain to another, the more we can apply powerful strategies to problems we face in life and work.

This is especially important as more of the tactical knowledge is being handled by technology. Inductive reasoning and far transfer is increasing in it's influence to effect a person's ability to progress and succeed in an ever-changing work environment. Epstein points out:

"Deep analogical thinking is the practice of recognizing conceptual similarities in multiple domains or scenarios that may seem to have little in common on the surface. It is a powerful tool fo resolving wicked problems..."

3. Match quality leads to more creativity.

Match quality is the degree of fit between your skills, interests, and what you do.

Match quality optimization is the process of discovering the domains where you excel. But to find the right match, it requires exposure to many different fields of expertise and study. In my personal life, I've worked at a fast food restaurant, at a medical device company, at an advertising agency, at a doctors office, and now I run an SEO agency. In a wicked domain, pick and stick, as soon as possible, is not the only domain to use when deciding on life decisions. Match quality comes from testing. So...

Try new things. Take a new course. Try something familiar with a different approach - no matter what age you are! Epstein sums it up well when talking about people who have breadth of experience because they sought math quality optimization:

Learners become better at applying their knowledge to a situation they've never seen before, which is the essence of creativity."

My favorite finds this week

• Video: Thomas Frank: The iPhone's Most Powerful New Productivity Feature - As an iPhone user, the new widget feature offers a lot of new ways to interact with your phone. I now have a screen for business, social apps, and a page of shortcuts of my personal favorite items on my phone. Check out this video to learn more about setting up widgets.
• Article: Tim Ferriss Book Recommendation List - One of my favorite thinks right now, this collection of about 130 book titles is a really nice list to peruse if you are on the hunt for some gifts or new books for your collection.
• Quote from the book Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy reminding us all, take a break, do something fun, relax and recover!

"Research shows that only 16 percent of creative insight happens while you're at work. Instead, ideas generally come while you're at home or in transit, or during recreational activity. You need time and space, and most important, relaxation & recovery, to allow ideas and solutions to ferment and form."

All in,

David

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By David Iskander

I'm David, a search specialist, and beginner YouTuber from Orange County, CA. My motto is: Whatever you do, do it beautifully. I enjoy making YouTube videos about website design, tech, productivity, and faith.