Whether you emphasize range and broad sampling or deliberate practice and the head start, you’re best off when you resist the temptation to skate through life, giving yourself to neither strenuous practice in a field nor broad training and knowledge across disciplines.
A few weeks ago, I devoted a column to Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Rule,” a concept he explains in his book Outliers: people who master a craft or skill do so not simply because of their innate talents, or the fact they work hard, but through a combination of natural ability, luck (being in the right place at the right time), and a type of preparation that far exceeds that of their peers. The magic number of expertise is 10,000 hours of what Geoff Colvin calls “deliberate practice”—an activity designed specifically to improve performance, usually with a teacher’s help. At the end, I added a few comments about the importance of the “head start” and why—if we want to excel in a particular field—we should develop a craftsman mindset, examine our habits, and not waste time. (I pointed to a person’s twenties as being a critically important decade.)
Within hours, multiple readers (including my brother!) asked if I’d read David Epstein’s Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Epstein’s work, I was told, pushes back on the idea that deliberate practice and the head start is the key to future success. Curious to learn more, I picked up the book for myself.
Specialization vs. Sampling
Epstein points to research and examples that question the notion that specialization results in success. He writes:
Eventual elites typically devote less time early on to deliberate practice in the activity in which they will eventually become experts. Instead, they undergo what researchers call a “sampling period.” They play a variety of sports, usually in an unstructured or lightly structured environment; they gain a range of physical proficiencies from which they can draw; they learn about their own abilities and proclivities; and only later do they focus in and ramp up technical practice in one area.
It’s not that that specialization doesn’t matter or that the head start can’t help you. It’s just not the full picture, he says.
One study showed that early career specializers jumped out to an earnings lead after college, but that later specializers made up for the head start by finding work that better fit their skills and personalities. I found a raft of studies that showed how technological inventors increased their creative impact by accumulating experience in different domains, compared to peers who drilled more deeply into one; they actually benefited by proactively sacrificing a modicum of depth for breadth as their careers progressed. There was a nearly identical finding in a study of artistic creators.