Range: Why Generalists Triumph…book review

Prepare for the future, don’t try to plan it…

by David Epstein (b1983)

New York: Riverhead Books, 2019

355 pages

We don’t know the future.

We can prepare for it to happen by sampling life and all it has to offer.

We don’t have to choose a career track

or a life path all at once when we’re young.

Most successful, satisfied people change jobs and change goals during their lives.

“Compare yourself to yourself yesterday, not to younger people who aren’t you.” (p. 290)

Don’t “decide what you should be before first figuring out who you are.” (p. 289)

Michelangelo “left three-fifths of his sculptures unfinished.” (p. 164)

“Instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations.”

Quote from Paul Graham, cited on p. 163

You don’t have to start out committed to one specialized goal or career or life path.

It’s OK to experiment with life, and to keep switching to another thing that interests you more.

It’s OK to take advantage of a lucky break, and make a move in a different direction.

Epstein says it more convincingly, in more detail, with plenty of facts to back up his argument in Range.

p.s. Epstein didn’t start out planning to be a shrewd observer of human nature, but he got there.

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