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Rating: ★★★★½ Summary: In Time Enough for Love, one of Robert A. Heinlein's characters proclaims that "specialization is for insects." While some amount of localized expertise may be necessary in the modern world, many of the most successful scientists, artists, and athletes went through extensive sampling periods and learned lots of different skills before carving out a niche for themselves. Sure, there are people like Tiger Woods in the world who obsessively leverage a head start and dominate the competition, but there are also people like Roger Federer, who played soccer, squash, handball, badminton and tennis as a child. We ought to give more credence to the latter form of skill development, and worship the former a bit less. Take the story of Vincent Van Gogh, for example. Van Gogh was an art salesman, a school teacher, and even a pastor before turning to painting in his late 20s. Stories such as Van Gogh's are abundant throughout history. Finding match quality through experimentation is far more valuable in the long run than sticking with a job, career, or field of study that doesn't quite fit. Generalists and those with outsider knowledge are often able to solve problems that groups of specialists cannot. Epstein writes about medical scientists who reached an impasse in their research, only to have the problem solved by a total stranger through a crowdsourcing site called InnoCentive. Having a broad, unrelated knowledge base can help to solve seemingly intractable problems. One of the keys to creativity and innovation is analogical thinking. Kepler's contributions to astrophysics arose in part from his use of disparate analogies to explain the laws of planetary motion. When approaching a problem, try comparing it to something completely different. Kepler thought of planetary orbits using a barrage of analogies like magnets, whirlpools, scales and elastic bands. There are two types of learning environments: wicked and kind. Kind learning environments offer immediate feedback. A tennis player knows whether the ball went over the net or not in a split second. She can adjust her hand positioning and posture in training to rectify mistakes. In a wicked learning environment, feedback is so delayed and noisy that it may not be helpful when calibrating one's decision-making. In the world of business, CEOs may begin a cascade of changes that won't have a clear impact until the CEO has retired. Investors in the stock market may be rewarded for making a terrible decision simply based on luck. Specialization works well in kind learning environments, but is insufficient to handle the complexity of wicked environments. One of the most important skills for the future is the ability to recognize and make connections between deep structures. Epstein writes about students in an integrated studies program, where the curriculum extended across math, biology, chemistry, and physics. These learners were better able to solve complex problems and see commonalities across domains. Specialist students in other programs simply couldn't see the linkages between their area of study and other subjects. Favorite Quote: "Instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations. This is what most successful people actually do anyway."
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