I’m biased. As Mulder did, I want to believe. Except, I want to believe that being a generalist can work. And that’s what “Range,” by David Epstein, claims. It’s subtitle is, “How generalists triumph in a specialised world.”

It’s not a challenging read. There is a lot of anecdata, examples of people who took a broad path and still succeeded. In that sense, maybe it’s like “Quiet,” which is about introverts. It doesn’t tell you how to succeed, only that it’s possible and that you’re not alone. Maybe that’s enough?

In that sense, it’s not a game changer for me. But there are some good lines in it, some scenarios that I could relate to. For example, I like this:

As education pioneer John Dewey put it in Logic, The Theory of Inquiry, “a problem well put is half-solved.”

This is absolutely my experience. The process of asking a well formed question often leads to the answer. I have started asking questions on Stack Overflow countless times but I’ve asked only twenty-one questions in the fourteen years I’ve been on the site.

I also like this, which I read as an argument for diverse teams.

“When all members of the laboratory have the same knowledge at their disposal, then when a problem arises, a group of similar minded individuals will not provide more information to make analogies than a single individual,” Dunbar concluded.

It’s no good to have a team where you have a lone genius and a bunch of grunts. It’s much better to have a team of differently smart people who can learn from each other; I can “trade” my deeper knowledge in one area for your experience in another. It seems that it’s not just good for the individuals but for the team, and possible society as a whole, too.

I come across this a lot:

The best forecasters view their own ideas as hypothesis in need of testing. Their aim is not to convince their teammates of their own expertise, but to encourage their teammates to help them falsify their own notions.

I share some half-formed theory or idea, with the expectation that other people find the holes and tell me how much of an idiot I am. I am then surprised when people take them as a finished item and run with them.

Generalists … believe employers will view their varied background as a liability, so they downplay it.

And this is certainly me. Employers are almost always looking for a very specific list of requirements and often see detours in an unfavourable light. I found that including my iPhone development activities on my CV sometimes worked against me, for example.

I’ve started to “own” my background much more recently. It becomes self-selecting. The companies that don’t value that extra experience won’t want to hire me, but nor would I want to work for them. A win for us both.

Back to the book. In the end, it’s a fine but not an essential read.