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Having Range

I have been reading Range by David Epstein and got the many plot points by end of Chapter 1. It is generally how things go with books of this ilk. The author posits a provocative theory to grab your attention and tells you just about everything they are going to tell you in the prologue. In Chapter 1 you get a sense of how the rest of the book will flow - how topics will be introduced, analyzed and closed. By the end of Chapter 1 you should have enough information to decide if you want to commit or not. In this instance the answer for me was - not. 

However, as is often the case, that means you as a reader may miss little nuggets of information you might have found insightful or entertaining. Sometimes these are few and far between so one has to make a choice. I decided to abandon the reading and go find something else. But this nice summary has me and other readers like me covered. In my life experience, I have found people with range more interesting, entertaining and insightful. They are also not always goal-oriented and results focused. Being a dabbler frees up a person from need to deliver results, prove anything in particular - they are exploring, sampling and discovering. 

A boss I had in the early years of my career give me some sound advice that I use and recall to this day. His formula was to go wide for a period of time and dive deep into one area for an equal amount of time and then repeat the process. Each round of going wide ends up being different because you have achieved depth in certain areas - that makes you see what you had seen before in new light. At the time of speaking, L had done two rounds of this process and was on his third. Coming from a privileged background and a top ranking business school, it was easy for him to structure his career in this manner. I understood the value of what he was saying but did not have nearly the same opportunities to act on it. But that random piece of wisdom shared in the breakroom stuck with me always.

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