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I have just finished Range – why generalists triumph in a specialized world, by David Epstein and after faltering mid-way through at the sheer length of some of the stories (the new defacto American way of writing for this genre) I recovered and loved the book. I can definitely recommend it if you want to understand why you lean towards ’portfolio’ rather than portico (I just coined that). You are on track to becoming a T shaped person / professional and you won’t regret it!
Can I add that Cherry Drops make the world a better place.
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I won a copy from an Instagram competition (random I know!)… so I’m just waiting for it to arrive. Listened to a great podcast on Squiggly Careers with him. Thanks for sharing Sarah – a few others in the group have got it as a result. For me, it’s 92% dark chocolate 🙂
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That’s because you understand sugar so much better than most! x
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Couldn’t agree more, Sarah – it’s a good read – a few long-winded descriptions early on – but am now half way through. Having soaked up Outliers some years ago… and subsequently ignored to an extent (as I didn’t have 10,000 hours to spare… and wasn’t sure what I wanted to master anyway!!) and more recently enjoyed Matthew Syed’s Bounce, this carries along in the same kind of way, pulling interesting examples from many different areas (sport, music, astronomy…) to show that having breadth / range is a hugely valuable background… But it doesn’t (so far) appear to argue against the need for specialism – just about the need to specialise early. The McKinsey T-shaped skillset has been perceived by many as the model for some time, but if the initial tenet of the book is (I think?) that specialists will have their roles taken over by computers, there appears to be a bit of a gap in thinking, as that single leg of the T-shape could be wiped out… leaving a… dash?! Perhaps the second half of the book closes that gap – or my gap in analysing/understanding this!!
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This resonates Malcom, and thank you for your thoughts. I have been reading widely for a couple of years to a) discover what I need to be reading and b) to assemble some life and work hacks. One thing I’ve noticed is that the book length doesn’t always denote a lot of material but is more linked to a writing technique that seems to be peculiarly American (Syed, Gladwell, Kahneman etc) – have you noticed it too? (Aside – have you ever considered, or tried, Blinkist as a hack to this kind of book genre? I haven’t as yet but am wondering about it). Also they can be thin on techniques or strategies, preferring ’lessons’ that you interpret for yourself over formulae. Probably not a bad thing. On your very good point to the leg of the T; I think Rangers, which I’ve suddenly thought of and want to co-opt, will certainly need to take care that our leg is in a deep area that is automation or AI resistant. Spitballing for now, that likely means that it will require a wrapper of metacognition and soft skills ie. so that you wouldn’t say I am a T cell Biologist or a Data Analyst but a Decision Tree T cell Biologist or a Human Morality Data Analyst… Actually I’ve just found that exercise very hard to do and I think this is a challenge that it is worth trying on for size a few times over to try to ’future-proof’ your skillset. Please have a better go than I have!
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Great recommendation! I’ll add it to the book thread that Claire Moss started!