Specialisation Is For Insects | David Epstein

1. 0:00 – 1:04

   Specialists vs generalists: the “frogs and birds” model

   1. DEDavid Epstein0:00

      Yeah, it's really interesting, and that's not to- that is absolutely not to say that specialists aren't important, right? Absolutely not. In fact, I like to highlight the NPR, you know, our public radio did a review of Range, and they- they say that I spend a lot of time giving credit to dissenters, which- which I like because not even dissenters, like I agree we need specialists also. I- I like the way that- that the physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson, uh, and- and great writer, uh, framed it. He said, "We need frogs and birds. Frogs are down in the mud looking at all the little details. Birds are up above, they can't see those details, but they can integrate the information of frogs." And he said, "The problem is we're telling everybody to become frogs." And- and when the- when, you know, when disciplines and science changes that- that becomes a big problem. And that's sort of how I- I think of it. And so- so I think you need... Like, these problems that stumped the people at Lilly, obviously they were solving a lot of problems on their own, they were posting the ones that they got stuck. So, I think with the combination of that, of the indocentive approach and those specialists, that's where you get the best of both worlds, and you have this healthy problem-solving ecosystem.

2. 1:04 – 3:50

   Why Epstein wrote Range: from sports genetics to career reinvention

   1. CWChris Williamson1:04

      I am joined by David Epstein all the way from the opposite side of the Atlantic, and we're talking about Range today. How are you, David?

   2. DEDavid Epstein1:14

      I'm well. Thanks for having me.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:16

      You're, uh, all over the place at the moment, right? You're a busy guy.

   4. DEDavid Epstein1:19

      Yes. Uh, uh, quite honestly, I'm getting sick a little bit of my own voice. (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson1:23

      Oh. (laughs) Yeah, yeah. Well, I, uh, thankfully for the listeners, I don't think that they will be. So, we're gonna, uh-

   6. DEDavid Epstein1:30

      (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson1:30

      ... we're gonna dig into your new book today, Range, right? Talking about generalists and specialists.

   8. DEDavid Epstein1:36

      Yeah, absolutely.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:37

      Why, uh, why did you write the book, first off?

   10. DEDavid Epstein1:41

       Y- you know, it- it sort of- it sort of came- the genesis of it came in sort of two parts, one of which was, uh, I wrote a book before this called The Sports Gene, um, about genetics and athleticism. And I, as- well, as Malcolm Gladwell would say, I devoted several pages to criticizing his work. That's how he puts it, to basically criticizing the science underlying the 10,000 hour rule. And so we got invited to this conference here called the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. It's founded by the general manager of the Houston Rockets. Um, and we were invited there to debate, 10,000 hours versus The Sports Gene. And it- so it's on YouTube, you can see it.

   11. CWChris Williamson2:16

       Oh, wow.

   12. DEDavid Epstein2:17

       And he's- he's very clever and I didn't want to get embarrassed (laughs) . So- so I did my homework, tried to anticipate what he would argue, you know, and thinking, all right, well, he's got to argue for early specialization. It's- it's kind of implicit in some of the things he's written. Um, and so I went and looked at- at science of athletic development and saw that, in fact, in most sports and in most places of the world, athletes who go on to become elite have a so-called sampling period where they play a variety of sports, they gain these broad general skills, they, uh, learn about their interests and abilities, and they actually delay specializing until later than peers who plateau at lower levels. And I sort of brought that up in the debate and he said, "Ah, you know what you-" later, "You know what you kind of got me on was that thing. You should- you should write more about that." And I sort of filed it away in the back of my head, um, and didn't think about it much more for, you know, more than a year. And then I was doing some work with a foundation here in the- I was giving a talk to some military veterans who'd been given scholarships by this foundation called the Pat Tillman Foundation to aid them in new career trajectories, and I talked a little bit about late specialization in sports. And since they weren't athletes, I sort of tacked on a little bit of research about the work world. And they were so enthusiastic about it because they were all career changing and they'd been told they were behind and all these things, um, that it was like, you know, they just wanted more and more and more, and they all wanted to follow up and keep in touch. And I sort of said, these people have had these incredible experiences, you know, some of them are former Navy SEALs and all this kind of stuff, and they're being told like that they're behind, you know, instead of how they can wield those experiences. And so I sort of thought, all right, there's- there's something worth doing here.

3. 3:50 – 5:28

   The Gladwell update: practice matters, early single-track specialization often doesn’t

   1. CWChris Williamson3:50

      Yeah. So how did the debate with Malcolm go? Do you- did you draw? Was it deduced to draw? How do you think it went?

   2. DEDavid Epstein3:56

      You know, first of all, I think we- we have more common ground than 10,000 hours versus The Sports Gene, to be quite honest (laughs) .

   3. CWChris Williamson4:02

      Mm-hmm.

   4. DEDavid Epstein4:02

      Um, and we- we were... So it's on YouTube, people can see that, but we had a- we were invited back in March to the same conference. Um, and we went again, and this time it was- it wasn't framed as a debate, just as a discussion. And it- this one's on YouTube too, and at minute 54 he says, "You know, I- I now feel a little differently. I think I've conflated two ideas. The ide- the idea that you need a lot of practice to become good, with the idea that in order to become good at X, you should do only X and only X starting as early as possible. And I think one of those is true and the other is not, and I think I conflated them, so now my idea's a little different." And I- I thought that was, you know, a great way to- to sort of update the- the mental model. And I mean, he's a super open-minded guy, I think we both learned things from our discussions, and that was our- our recent discussion and that- that's sort of where he's at- where he's at on it, so...

   5. CWChris Williamson4:50

      I mean, if you've managed to change Malcolm Gladwell's mind, and he's somewhere on the book, right? Like- like on the- (laughs)

   6. DEDavid Epstein4:56

      (laughs) Yeah, yeah. He- he gave-

   7. CWChris Williamson4:57

      Like, he's on the front page of the book.

   8. DEDavid Epstein4:58

      ... he- he gave like the world's greatest, uh, blurb, I think. It says something like, you know, "For reasons I can't explain, uh, David makes me enjoy the experience of being told everything I thought about something was wrong," or something like that.

   9. CWChris Williamson5:09

      Wow.

   10. DEDavid Epstein5:10

       Which- which of course everything he thought about it isn't wrong, but- but you know, what he's- he's- he's saying.

   11. CWChris Williamson5:16

       Yeah, I get it, man. That's, um, that's a big accolade from a very, very well respected, uh, guy in that field. So moving on to the book itself, where does it begin? Where do we start with Range?

4. 5:28 – 8:27

   Tiger Woods vs Roger Federer: which path is actually typical?

   1. DEDavid Epstein5:28

      Yeah, so it's- bec- because it's sort of, you know, one of the seeds of its genesis was in the sports world, um, that's- that's kind of where it begins. Because when we were having that first debate, we sort of talked about this, what- what we kind of framed as the Roger versus Tiger, uh, problem. So everyone knows the Tiger Woods story, but maybe they don't know it, but you- you've absorbed the gist of it probably, which is that, you know, he- he specialized very, very young. His father gave him a putter when he was seven months old and he dragged it around in his little baby walker. Not- not- not trying to make him into a golfer, but just like giving him something to play with, you know?

   2. CWChris Williamson6:02

      Yeah.

   3. DEDavid Epstein6:02

      And he-But by, but he was very physically precocious, and by 10 months, he was imitating a swing he'd seen his father practicing, and two years old, this is also on YouTube, two years old, he's, he's on a national television show showing off his golf swing in front of Bob Hope, who's sort of a famous television personality here. Um, you know, at three, his fat- his father, by this point, realizes that there's something very unusual.

   4. CWChris Williamson6:25

      (laughs)

   5. DEDavid Epstein6:25

      At three, he starts sort of media training him, you know, playing reporter and having him answer some, some questions. Uh, and, you know, fast-forward to the age of 21, he becomes the best golfer in the world, and, and from a very young age was ... Like, there's some, there's some sort of cute interview clips of him saying, like, you know, "I'm gonna be Jack Nicklaus," or whatever, when he's four years old, basically. So, on the other end of the spectrum was Roger Federer, who, who was also, you know, a gifted athlete, clearly, from the time he was young, but, um, played, dabbled in swimming, skiing, wrestling, handball, basketball, tennis, table tennis, badminton, soccer, a little bit of rugby. I think I'm missing one, but anyway, bunch of stuff.

   6. CWChris Williamson7:05

      (laughs) A lot.

   7. DEDavid Epstein7:06

      Mother w- mother was a tennis coach, refused to coach him because he, like, wouldn't return balls normally. You know, he kind of wanted to do his own thing.

   8. CWChris Williamson7:12

      Mm-hmm.

   9. DEDavid Epstein7:12

      And, and even when, even when he was getting really good and, and the coaches suggested he move up to older, play with older players, he declined because he liked talking about, you know, pro-wrestling with his, uh, with his friends after practice. And he, he didn't have any of those ideas that, "I'm gonna be ..." You know, like the Tiger Woods did, "I'm gonna be Jack Nicklaus," or whatever. He, so when he got good enough to warrant an interview with a local newspaper and they asked him if he ever became a pro what would he buy with his first paycheck, he said, "A Mercedes," and his mother was appalled by this-

   10. CWChris Williamson7:42

       (laughs)

   11. DEDavid Epstein7:42

       ... and asked the reporter if she could hear the, the recording of it, and the reporter obliged, and it turned out he'd actually said, "Mere CDs," in a Swiss German accent. He just wanted more CDs, not, not a Mercedes.

   12. CWChris Williamson7:53

       (laughs)

   13. DEDavid Epstein7:53

       Um, so ... So, he, he was, he w- it was different. So he said, in 2006, when they were both dominating everything, Roger sort of said, like, his, you know, "I've never met someone who's so familiar with this feeling of being kind of invincible, but his story is completely different than mine." And so the question was sort of, which one of these is more nor- normal? Because we know the Tiger Woods story and we've, we've extrapolated from that story to all of these other areas of life. We don't really hear the Roger Federer story that much, and, and which is the norm, and it, and it turns out that the Federer story is, is far more typical, especially in non-golf sports.

5. 8:27 – 11:33

   Defining generalists, specialists, and polymaths using inventor data

   1. CWChris Williamson8:27

      Is that true? I'd, I'd have been surprised. I think, upon hearing about specialization versus generalization, you immediately hark to Henry Ford, right? And like the-

   2. DEDavid Epstein8:38

      Yeah. Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson8:38

      ... advent of what, uh, capitalism has been, specializing in-

   4. DEDavid Epstein8:42

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson8:42

      N- n- y- you hear all the time, like, one of the first things that I was told when I started this podcast, um, I was looking online at what the, um, status quo was for how you do a podcast and what you should do. One of the first things, niche down. Like, niche down as hard as you can and then expand out from there, et cetera, et cetera. Um, so yeah, the- there's definitely a pervasive, uh, acceptance of niching down hard, big specialization early on, compound, like, then leverage the compounding interest that you get on top of that one thing being ... 'Cause if you start 10 years later than that, that's 10 years of compounding interest that you haven't got on that particular skill, but-

   6. DEDavid Epstein9:22

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson9:22

      ... it seems like there's potentially a- a- an alternative route.

   8. DEDavid Epstein9:25

      Yeah, I mean, in, in the podcast world, I mean, that ma- makes some sense to me, right? 'Cause there's so much competition right now for podcasts, like, compared to my last book which came out six years ago, I mean, the number of podcasts invitations I've gotten, like, there must have been an exponential explosion in podcasts since then, and I think that makes a lot of sense, and it ... And that sort of, that sort of gets to a couple of issues. One of which is that the, the difference between a generalist and a specialist is semantic, right? And it's like ver- w- what even is it? Like, you know, it's just a matter of degree and semantics, um, and in, in the book, I talk about these interesting studies of inventors, of technological inventors, and, and basically what these studies show is that they're, they're ... In this case, there actually is sort of a, uh, a label for generalists and specialists, and, and the researchers usually do it by looking at patents. And they'll say, okay, the specialists over their career have their patents in a more ni- smaller number of technological domains. The US Patent and Trademark Office has 450 different technological domains and then they have all these sub-domains. And so the specialists will usually stay in one or very few of those classes. The generalists might be in lots of them, maybe dozens of them even, right? And so the question in some of this research was, which of these people makes the bigger contributions-

   9. CWChris Williamson10:40

      Yes.

   10. DEDavid Epstein10:40

       ... in technology?

   11. CWChris Williamson10:41

       Yes. Yes.

   12. DEDavid Epstein10:41

       And, and the answer was basically, the specialists make contributions and the generalists make contributions. Then there are these sort of dilettantes who don't have a lot of depth or breadth and they don't make-

   13. CWChris Williamson10:50

       Yeah.

   14. DEDavid Epstein10:50

       ... many contributions.

   15. CWChris Williamson10:50

       Yep.

   16. DEDavid Epstein10:51

       And then the, the biggest contributions come from what they call the polymath who, who s- ha- starts grounded in a certain area and then over the course of their career begins sacrificing some more depth for breadth.

   17. CWChris Williamson11:03

       Yes.

   18. DEDavid Epstein11:03

       So they, they, they do start in this area and they can continue ... They, and they, they could go either path. When they have a grounding in one area and they could start going broad right away or they could drill down right away, and what they do is, is they, they, you know, get some firm footing in that one area and then they start going broad and, like, combining these different realms, taking knowledge from one domain and bringing it to the other. And specifically, those people do better when they're in these sort of more amorphous technological areas where the next questions, the next steps aren't so clear.

   19. CWChris Williamson11:33

       Mobile.

6. 11:33 – 22:10

   Breakthroughs from adjacent knowledge: optical film and Nintendo’s Game Boy

   1. DEDavid Epstein11:33

      Um, so, uh, like things that are unexpected, uh, breakthroughs, so one of the ones I, one of the ones I talk about in the book is this thing called multi-layer optical film which, I know that sounds, like, technical but-

   2. CWChris Williamson11:44

      Mm-hmm.

   3. DEDavid Epstein11:44

      But I like this example because it is in everything. It's in your cellphone, it's in your computer, and it's, it's basically these layers of polymers or plastics that, um, can be tailored to reflect and refract light in certain ways, and so that instead of being absorbed by your screen or coming out of the screen, it will bounce around and get recycled-

   4. CWChris Williamson12:04

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   5. DEDavid Epstein12:05

      And so you need less battery power in order to, um-... to, to keep the screen bright and all these sorts of things.

   6. CWChris Williamson12:11

      Good.

   7. DEDavid Epstein12:11

      And the inventor who, um, led the team that discovered that sort of said, you know, "I was told all my career to become a specialist," in, in his particular field. And he said, you know, "What nobody told me was that I should also learn all of the adjacent stuff," like all these other types of, like, technologies around it. And that's, that's really what gave him his breakthrough, um, learning all this stuff that was outside of his specialty and kind of bringing it into things that he knew better. A- a- and even more, um, uh, more generalist level, one of the stories I liked was a guy named Gunpei Yokoi, who, um, didn't do well on his electronics exams in Japan so he had to settle for kind of a low-tier job as a machine maintenance worker at a playing card company. And the students who did better on the electronics exam wanted big companies in Tokyo, and, and he had to be in this playing card company in, in Kyoto. And he realized that he was not really equipped to work on the cutting edge and, but that there was a lot of information easily available that, as people were sort of racing to, to the cutting edge, they were leaving behind and that you could combine it in ways that specialists kind of couldn't see. And so he started doing that and, uh, went from being a machine maintenance worker just tinkering around to starting a toy and game operation at that company, and the company is called Nintendo-

   8. CWChris Williamson13:27

      (laughs)

   9. DEDavid Epstein13:27

      ... which was started as a 19th century playing card company.

   10. CWChris Williamson13:30

       No way.

   11. DEDavid Epstein13:31

       And, and, and he started the first toy and game development operation and, and did use that strategy to create the Game Boy, which was outdated processor, you know, screen that looks like rotten salad or something-

   12. CWChris Williamson13:41

       (laughs)

   13. DEDavid Epstein13:41

       ... four grayscale, four grayscale shades of graphics, right-

   14. CWChris Williamson13:44

       Right.

   15. DEDavid Epstein13:44

       ... and, um-

   16. CWChris Williamson13:46

       (laughs)

   17. DEDavid Epstein13:46

       ... came out right when Sega and Atari came out with color versions of the same thing.

   18. CWChris Williamson13:50

       Mm-hmm.

   19. DEDavid Epstein13:51

       But what he knew... So he, his philosophy, he translates to, "Lateral thinking with withered technology." And what he meant by that was, lateral thinking meaning taking, you know, knowledge from one area where it's sort of ordinary and bringing it somewhere else where it... Not pushing the cutting edge, but taking knowledge from across-

   20. CWChris Williamson14:07

       Mm-hmm.

   21. DEDavid Epstein14:07

       ... and bringing it somewhere else.

   22. CWChris Williamson14:07

       Mm-hmm.

   23. DEDavid Epstein14:08

       And by withered technology, he meant stuff that's already well-understood and cheaper, so you don't have the... You don't need the specialist's eye for, like, what are gonna be the developmental, um, you know, hurdles. And that became, like, a core philosophy for, for Nintendo. Um, and, you know, I think it's, I think it's pretty cool. And in fact when, when one of his colleagues came to him, he recounted this, when the Game Boy was gonna come out, and said, "Bad news. Sega and Atari have theirs, like, coming out right at the same time." And Yokoi said, um, "Are they color?" And his colleague says, "Yes." And he's like, "Then we're fine. No problem." Because what he realized was that the, the barrier to getting more customers was not the competing on the quality of the graphics necessarily or the color. It was, uh, you know, affordability, um, durability, uh, battery life, all these things. So Game Boy's practically indestructible.

   24. CWChris Williamson15:04

       Yeah.

   25. DEDavid Epstein15:04

       Um, i- i- during the research of this book, I found one in my parents' basement. It had batteries that had expired 2007 and I tr- flipped it on a played Tetris for a couple minutes. Um-

   26. CWChris Williamson15:11

       Still, uh, they're indestructible, aren't they?

   27. DEDavid Epstein15:13

       Indestructible. You get it wet, you know, you l- leave it out, dry out, it comes back. And also because the technology was well-understood, they were able to pump out tons of games really quickly, like-

   28. CWChris Williamson15:22

       Mm-hmm.

   29. DEDavid Epstein15:22

       ... both internally and from external developers. You know, it was almost like making a platform where app developers could start making stuff quickly because they already knew all this technology. And so that was a real... I mean, he was like a pure sort of generalist inventor. But, but I think the... In, in some of the other research, it was sort of that, those, those polymath inventors who have their area of expertise but then they, they kind of understand things that are adjacent to it.

   30. CWChris Williamson15:44

       Yeah. It, it sounds like there's a lot of frontiers that you've gone into with this, considering, as you say, the sports gene focused on athletics and, and sports-
7. 22:10 – 25:34

   Avoiding the pigeonhole: identity, career branding, and personal satisfaction

   1. DEDavid Epstein22:10

      Okay. Because you mentioned not being a trope of your- yourself, you know?

   2. CWChris Williamson22:13

      Yes.

   3. DEDavid Epstein22:13

      And after The Sports Gene came out, that was sort of a surprise success for me. Um, and-

   4. CWChris Williamson22:18

      Mm-hmm. Were you worried about being pigeonholed after that?

   5. DEDavid Epstein22:23

      I, I guess I wasn't worried about it because I was... Because, because one, outwardly, it's fine for people to pigeonhole me. Like if, if, if I do something that's more valuable to readers or more interesting to them and that's what they identify me with, that's fine.

   6. CWChris Williamson22:37

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   7. DEDavid Epstein22:37

      The o- the pigeonholing I'm concerned about is, like, the things that I wanna do. Right?

   8. CWChris Williamson22:41

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   9. DEDavid Epstein22:41

      So if, if I'm viewed as being in a pigeonhole, I don't mind that so much, but I don't wanna actually be in a pigeonhole in my daily life. (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson22:47

       I guess that you can break out, like, anything that you do, presuming that you don't then take the, uh, (clears throat) particular label that you've been lumbered with and feel like you have some sort of, uh, duty to follow that.

   11. DEDavid Epstein23:01

       Right. Right.

   12. CWChris Williamson23:01

       As long as you don't do that, you're actually... Like, 'cause t- A perfect example is what we're talking about now. Like, I wrote a bot on s- on, on... I wrote a book on sports, now I'm gonna bring one out that kinda touches on sports but touches on loads of other stuff as well. Like, "Fuck you. I'm gonna do what I want." Like, and if the-

   13. DEDavid Epstein23:17

       Yeah. (laughs)

   14. CWChris Williamson23:17

       ... if the people from The Sports Gene come along for the ride, then fantastic.

   15. DEDavid Epstein23:21

       I mean, the advice was basically to write The Sports Gene 2 right away after The Sports Gene. It was-

   16. CWChris Williamson23:25

       Yeah. Yeah.

   17. DEDavid Epstein23:26

       ... "Do it again, brand yourself as the sports science guy," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and-

   18. CWChris Williamson23:30

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Specialized.

   19. DEDavid Epstein23:31

       Yeah. Two weeks after that book came out, I left Sports Illustrated and went to a job that has nothing to do with sports-

   20. CWChris Williamson23:36

       (laughs)

   21. DEDavid Epstein23:36

       ... at this place called ProPublica, that's just, you know, uh, doing reporting on drug cartels and stuff like that. So, like, you know, several years after the book came out, I would still get introduced places as a reporter at Sports Illustrated, I hadn't been there in four years.

   22. CWChris Williamson23:49

       (laughs)

   23. DEDavid Epstein23:49

       You know?

   24. CWChris Williamson23:50

       Yeah.

   25. DEDavid Epstein23:50

       And so... Um, but... And, and may- maybe if I had branded myself as a sports science guy and wrote Sports Gene 2, I, I don't know the counterfactual, like, maybe financially I would have been more successful. I really don't know.

   26. CWChris Williamson24:01

       Mm-hmm.

   27. DEDavid Epstein24:01

       But, um, it is absolutely not what I wanted to do. And I feel, um, thi- uh, things obviously have been going well with this book. And, you know, there were, there are chapters on art and music and those, researching those chapters ignited interest for me that really changed the way I go to a museum or listen to a concert. So it really has added to my life in a very material way, just like doing the, the exploration. And I think that's one of the ways that-You know, we kinda get into this sort of work where we, we talk to people with unfamiliar ideas, because we're interested in a lot, you know?

   28. CWChris Williamson24:35

       Yeah. So, thinking about the outcomes, I want to go back to the actual process of how we talk about specializing at the beginning and then moving on to being a generalist later on, and the-

   29. DEDavid Epstein24:45

       Mm-hmm.

   30. CWChris Williamson24:45

       ... the actual sort of nitty-gritty about that, 'cause I'm sure a lot of people are looking for some prescriptions and some heuristic for how they can apply that-
8. 25:34 – 28:17

   Kind vs wicked learning environments—and why automation changes the stakes

   1. DEDavid Epstein25:34

      That, that's a good question, and I think in some ways it's sort of domain dependent. And let me, let me explain why I, I think that. Um, so I- I introduced this concept in the book that- that ... of different types of learning environments, what the psychologist Robin Hogarth calls kind and wicked learning environments. And kind learning environments are where, um, all the im- the information is freely, easily available, human behavior is usually not as involved very much, um, next steps are clear. You get automatic feedback when you do something, and that feedback is fully accurate. So you can think of golf as something like this, or- or chess, you know?

   2. CWChris Williamson26:13

      Mm-hmm.

   3. DEDavid Epstein26:13

      And it's based on repetitive patterns. And, um, so in a lot of areas, like if you read some of the underlying sort of 10,000 hours type research, a lot of the advantage of specialized experts has to do with types of pattern recognition, basically. So they learn to pick up these patterns in- in an unconscious way that allows them to make certain types of decisions. And in chess, for example, that works like rocket fuel. Like early specialization works in chess. Um, in fact, if you haven't started studying those patterns by the age of 12, your chances of reaching international master status, which is like one down from grandmaster, drops from like 1 in 4 to like 1 in 55 or something like that. Um, so it works. The thing is, those domains also tend to be the easiest to automate because of those unchanging rules and based on repetitive patterns and easy feedback and things like that. So the reason that chess ... you know, computers got so good at chess so quickly, um, is because it's a kind learning environment. If you ... As you get more wicked, so think of like from computer chess to self-driving cars where there's lots of rules, lots of recurring situations, and yet it's these sort of unusual things that have kept us from being able to fully implement them. And now people are talking about, "Well maybe we implement them only in certain areas that have certain rules and stuff like that." And then to the far end of the spectrum which is like medical research where IBM's Watson has- has underperformed so badly that some of the AI researchers I was talking to were concerned that it would like damage the reputation of AI in- in healthcare. And-

   4. CWChris Williamson27:40

      I haven't even heard ... I haven't even heard that story.

   5. DEDavid Epstein27:42

      Yeah, yeah. So one of the, one of the, uh, doctor scientists I was speaking with said (laughs) the reason Watson, uh, you know, destroyed at Jeopardy! and totally failed in cancer research is because we know the answers to Jeopardy!.

   6. CWChris Williamson27:57

      (laughs) .

   7. DEDavid Epstein27:57

      Um, so- so it's a different challenge. So- so some of it has to do with the domain you're in. So I think some of the domains that are most amenable to narrow specialization also become the easiest to automate, so- so that's a ... so that can create some serious losers in those- in those realms.

   8. CWChris Williamson28:12

      Future- future proofing yourself I guess therefore suggests generalist is the way to go.

9. 28:17 – 32:16

   Generalist career upside: job-function breadth, executives, and older startup founders

   1. DEDavid Epstein28:17

      In those realms. But I- but I also think you're right, that with generalization there are some- some winners and losers, right? Because, um, for some people it means they- they may end up looking a lot more like a dilettante. Okay? So like LinkedIn d- did some research recently that looked at what predicts who becomes an executive. And they have ... 'Cause they have these enormous databases, you know, so instead of a study of like 20 people, the- this study was half a million people. Um, and the number one, number one best predictor was if you went to a top five business school program, which, okay ... And that ... My guess is that that's not causal because of the schools, because it's selecting for people who are already doing (laughs) quite well.

   2. CWChris Williamson28:54

      Yes.

   3. DEDavid Epstein28:54

      You know? And but the next predictor was the number of different job functions you had worked across within an industry. So each different job function saved about three years, uh, of experience en route to- to going to become an executive. So that- that- that's very different than what we think of, right? Just telling people like bounce around these-

   4. CWChris Williamson29:10

      Linear progression.

   5. DEDavid Epstein29:11

      Yeah. So the chief economist's main recommendation, since like recommending someone like go to a top five business school, like that's not such a useful recommendation 'cause that's not open to everyone. Um, and- and, uh, and expensive and all that. And but so his top recommendation was to work across a large number of job functions, which is not the advice that you usually hear in a ... And I bet for some people that makes them ending up looking like a dilettante where it's kinda like, "Well you haven't really learned anything that well." And for other people, they're the most likely to become the executives. And so- so I think there probably is some of that, um, winner and loser. And- and- and I think ... So I- I was just at a, um ... Sorry I'm- I'm ... This is related but I'm sorta ... Can I digress a little?

   6. CWChris Williamson29:55

      Fire away, man. Wherever you-

   7. DEDavid Epstein29:55

      I have a di- I have a digressive brain. Okay.

   8. CWChris Williamson29:57

      Wherever you want to go David, we're going down the rabbit hole with you man. Come on.

   9. DEDavid Epstein30:00

      Okay. I was at this conference of- of the people who are interested in investing, and you know, what do I know?

   10. CWChris Williamson30:05

       (laughs)

   11. DEDavid Epstein30:05

       But they invited me to the conference to- to talk and-

   12. CWChris Williamson30:08

       You're just the- you're just the guy who doesn't- doesn't have a clue sitting in the corner. That would be me.

   13. DEDavid Epstein30:10

       Right. Right. (laughs)

   14. CWChris Williamson30:11

       We'd be sat in the corner together.

   15. DEDavid Epstein30:13

       Um, but so ... And they put up ... Before I went up they took something from my- my book and did a poll for the audience, you know where they could vote on their cell phones?

   16. CWChris Williamson30:21

       Okay.

   17. DEDavid Epstein30:22

       And- and the poll was, what do you think is the average age of a founder of a blockbuster startup on the day of the founding of the company?

   18. CWChris Williamson30:32

       Okay, go ahead.

   19. DEDavid Epstein30:32

       And the ... I think the choices were-... 25, 35, 45, 55, and 25 was the overwhelming answer.

   20. CWChris Williamson30:39

       Well, Mark Zuck- Mark Zuckerberg said once, "All old people are stupid," right? Or, "All young people are clever."

   21. DEDavid Epstein30:44

       No, young people are just smarter.

   22. CWChris Williamson30:45

       That's it, yeah.

   23. DEDavid Epstein30:47

       Um, right, he was 22 years old when he said that. Um, so he-

   24. CWChris Williamson30:49

       (laughs)

   25. DEDavid Epstein30:49

       ... had an interest in saying that, okay? And, and, but the actual answer, there's just some, some pretty new research from MIT and Northwestern and the US Census Bureau that show the average age is actually about 45 and a half, and that's, that's not when the company becomes breakthrough, it's, uh, the day of founding, right? So these people at this event who really pay attention to all this investing stuff, um, were overwhelmingly, it was like 70%, they thought 25. And I think the reality is that those startup founders often have to do some zigzagging, and they end up with these sort of unique groups of skills where it makes sense for them to go compete on their own ground and try to start up something new, um, because they have these sort of intersecting skills. Um, and obviously, startups are, are high risk, high failure, high reward, and all those things. But, but I do think you can be a big winner or a big loser as a, as a generalist. Um-

   26. CWChris Williamson31:45

       Yeah. How much do you think-

   27. DEDavid Epstein31:46

       ... you know.

   28. CWChris Williamson31:46

       As you're discussing that there, one of the things that comes to mind is diminishing margins of return.

   29. DEDavid Epstein31:50

       Mm-hmm.

   30. CWChris Williamson31:51

       So thinking about as someone specializes down, there is only so much better that you can get at something. Anyone who's tried weightlifting or power lifting knows that to PB within your first y- you're PBing every week in your first year of, like, going to the gym, right? But then after 10 years of training, for you to add, like, five kilos onto your total, it needs an ungodly amount of preparation, and people are working at the very margins of their performance.

10. 32:16 – 36:15

    When specialization backfires: unnecessary procedures and ‘surrogate marker’ thinking in medicine

    1. DEDavid Epstein32:16

       Right. So there's a question of maybe you can get more bang by incorporating a new skill where you're on the lower end of the learning curve still, and I think that's, that's interesting. But there's two things. E- e- even, even aside from diminishing returns, you can actually start to have really perverse effects from increasing specialization. So, so surgeons is, um, an area where I mention in the book that specialized surgeons have fewer complications, period. They do. Um, that's good. So if you have to have surgery-

    2. CWChris Williamson32:42

       Like, fewer problems, fewer problems happen.

    3. DEDavid Epstein32:43

       Fewer problems.

    4. CWChris Williamson32:44

       Right, cool.

    5. DEDavid Epstein32:44

       That's right, fewer problems, specialized surgeons. And, and even if you account for the n- the, their experience, the number of times they've done the surgery, specialized surgeons still do better. So there's something on top of just experience ab- about, about being a specialized surgeon that makes them even better. I don't know what it is.

    6. CWChris Williamson32:59

       Interesting.

    7. DEDavid Epstein33:00

       But that's, that's the finding. And so if you need to have surgery, um, you know, you want a specialized surgeon. At the same time, specialized surgeons, uh, tend to do a huge number of procedures that don't need to be done at all, such that, um, you know, if you ... There are these, these studies I cite where if you have to check into, um, a hospital with a heart problem, uh, you're, you're less likely to die ... And this is, of course, these are US-based studies. Um, if you check in on the dates of a national cardiology conference because you're less likely to get some of these intervention procedures that you may die with, right? So the, the cardiologist who wrote the editorial for this study said, "My, my colleagues and I would joke that this is the safest place to have a heart problem, at our conference, and this study really turns that on its head-"

    8. CWChris Williamson33:47

       (laughs)

    9. DEDavid Epstein33:47

       "... and suggests that a lot of unnecessary procedures are done," because the, the specialist will get this sort of, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail syndrome.

    10. CWChris Williamson33:55

        Mm-hmm.

    11. DEDavid Epstein33:55

        And so they're really good at the procedure, but they'll also continue to do it even, even after, even after science shows that like, it, um, unequivocally should not be done anymore. There, there's a whole book about this called Ending Medical Reversal by these two doctors that talks about how procedures keep being done even after science has, like, totally showed they should not be done anymore. So you can have, that's one-

    12. CWChris Williamson34:15

        Why, why do they keep, why do they keep being done? Is it people's kind of, uh ... Are they passionate or, like, feel some sort of sense of patriotism to the procedures?

    13. DEDavid Epstein34:24

        It's, it's a good question. Uh, and I kind of wrote an article about this at ProPublica called When Evidence Says No and Doctors Say Yes.

    14. CWChris Williamson34:30

        (laughs) Good title.

    15. DEDavid Epstein34:30

        Um, and, and I thought at first that it would be the simple case of, you know, when you pay someone to do one thing, it's hard to get them to do something else. But, you know, if they get paid for procedures. But a very prominent hospital here said, "Okay, we're going to uncouple payment from procedures for this particular kind of procedure," uh, placing a stent where you, you put like a tube in a, in a blood vessel and open it up when it's been narrowed. And if someone's having a heart attack, like, you know, it'll save their life. But this was particularly for people who just come in with stable coronary artery disease or stable chest pain, basically. And a number of randomized trials have shown that it doesn't work for that. Like, it doesn't ... It's not better than just these, like, less invasive therapies. Um, and when, when this prominent hospital decoupled compensation from the procedure, it still didn't solve the problem. And someone else did a study just sort of ... A, a psychological study of, of doctors who were doing these procedures and what they basically found was that they didn't believe these randomized controlled trials. And they would say, like, patient comes in with chest pain, they have a narrowed artery. Obviously, I fix it by opening it up.

    16. CWChris Williamson35:37

        Yeah.

    17. DEDavid Epstein35:37

        Right? Like, it makes sense, what they call bioplausible. Makes a ton of sense.

    18. CWChris Williamson35:40

        Yeah.

    19. DEDavid Epstein35:41

        But, but turns out that the ... we didn't design the human body. It's not a kitchen sink. It's much more complicated than that. And so when specialists are using what n- you now call in medicine, surrogate markers, they are fixing one piece of a puzzle and assuming that it affects the total outcome of th- this larger system. But in fact, in many cases, what they're doing is, you know, lowering someone's blood pressure and th- and then people die of heart attack and stroke at the exact same rates with lower blood pressure numbers. And so you really need someone looking at the outcomes you actually care about, not just to these surrogate markers-

    20. CWChris Williamson36:12

        Yeah.

    21. DEDavid Epstein36:13

        ... which are one small piece of the, of the whole puzzle.

11. 36:15 – 39:45

    Practical application: match quality, zigzagging, and ‘act then think’

    1. CWChris Williamson36:15

       That's super interesting. So going more towards, I guess, the nitty-gritty of the heuristics of how people can apply some of this sort of stuff to their own life, whether they be a, an athlete or a professional or someone that's just looking to advance themselves through life with some skills. I'm currently reading a number of books that kind of all fit into this. Scott H. Young's Ultralearning.

    2. DEDavid Epstein36:36

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson36:37

       I've got a, a pre-release of that. There's a lot of stuff he ... Obviously, he's super specialized and he did the, the MIT computer science course of three years in six months.

    4. DEDavid Epstein36:45

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson36:45

       But then he went and upgraded his ability to do portraits of people, like, 100Xed that in the space of 30 days. So he's-... periodizing specialization, but over a broader time span is actually being a generalist.

    6. DEDavid Epstein37:02

       Y- yeah. That- that- that gets at something that in- in most of the people I highlight in Range are not like what we think of in, from like the Renaissance, where it's like, "Oh, there's these- there's virtue in just being like, you know, a Renaissance person and doing all these different things." And it's much more that they are on the hunt for what economists call match quality, the degree of fit between your abilities and your interests in the work that you do. And the way that they find that is by- by zigzagging. So this- this woman who studies people's career fit, um, that I talk about in Range, her name's Herminia Ibarra, she's actually at the London Business School. Um, and, uh, she has this saying I love to say, "We learn who we are in practice, not in theory." And what she means is that there are all these personality quizzes and kind of career gurus that- that suggest that we can just introspect and- and go forth, you know, and- and like a commencement speech address, like, "Picture who you're gonna be in 10 or 20 years and march confidently toward it." When in fact, um, the research suggests that actually we have to do stuff to learn about what we're good at and what we're interested in. So she says act and then think. You do something and then reflect, and that's how you learn about the world, right? Sort of like dating. Like early on, it might seem like you should marry the first person you dated, but once you take more data-

    7. CWChris Williamson38:14

       (laughs)

    8. DEDavid Epstein38:14

       ... that seems like a less good idea.

    9. CWChris Williamson38:15

       (laughs)

    10. DEDavid Epstein38:15

        So we thought about careers.

    11. CWChris Williamson38:16

        That is the best. That is the absolute best. (laughs)

    12. DEDavid Epstein38:19

        Y- yeah. So we thought about careers, you know, the way we thought about dating, we probably wouldn't pressure people to settle down so quickly. Um, but those people end up doing a sort of zigzagging in search of match quality, 'cause once you get good match quality, your growth rate is a lot faster.

    13. CWChris Williamson38:33

        Mm-hmm.

    14. DEDavid Epstein38:34

        And they, so they're not setting out to say, "I'm gonna be a generalist." It's that in the process of this zigzagging, of saying, "Here's who I am right now, you know, here are my skills and interests, here are the opportunities in front of me. I'm gonna try this one, and maybe a year from now, I'll change, 'cause I will have learned something about myself and- and I'll do something else." And so they just end up with these broad experiences and skills, not because they set out to do it in many cases, but because that's how they get to their match quality spot.

    15. CWChris Williamson38:56

        Totally. So a couple of things coming to mind there. David Deida's The Way of the Superior Man, he talks about phases in people's lives, and he says that, um, one of the times that's a trigger for ... he's talking about men, but it applies to women as well, uh, when men realize that their time with a particular project is gone is that something which used to excite them no longer does. And he says a lot of people believe that you need to kind of grit your teeth and- and, uh, grind through it. And that- that, it would appear, doesn't seem to be the case. I think most people ... And this is one of the main questions that I've got, and I think a lot of people at home may be thinking this as well, the attraction of novelty is very high, and this diffuse focus where we're constantly being distracted by things is on an incredibly granular level, essentially generalization.

    16. DEDavid Epstein39:45

        Mm-hmm.

12. 39:45 – 43:20

    Deliberate experimentation (not scatter): the ‘Book of Experiments’ and explore/exploit

    1. CWChris Williamson39:45

       Like, you're looking at, "I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna- I'm gonna send a text, then I'll look at my email, then I'll go do this." And I think that as you scale that up over time, a lot of people may struggle to work out, "When am I, um, calling myself short from really working hard at something which is simply difficult but worthwhile and rewarding?"

    2. DEDavid Epstein40:08

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson40:08

       "And when am I making a change to try something new when it's justified?"

    4. DEDavid Epstein40:14

       Yeah. Yeah. And- and I'm not a big advocate of multitasking on- on that sense. Like-

    5. CWChris Williamson40:20

       (laughs) It's impossible. Isn't it?

    6. DEDavid Epstein40:21

       ... this- this project is very different than my last project, was very different than my previous projects, and whatever my next project is, that I don't, I have no idea, will be very different. But when I do those things, I focus in on them, you know, very hard.

    7. CWChris Williamson40:31

       Periodize it, can't it?

    8. DEDavid Epstein40:32

       Yeah. Yeah. And, um, so- so that's a good question. And I think, again, to think about Herminia Ibarra's work, one of the reasons she says that when you change, it's difficult because you're change- you have to change your identity. You're not just changing your job or what you're doing. And that's a slow process. And so a lot of the people that she saw that did it well, they sort of dip a toe into something, or they learn about ... somehow they get a keyhole view into something, they meet some new person or whatever it is, and they maybe take a class, and it's sort of they see a little, and little by little, and then they start to realize they have like more interest in this or more talent for it or whatever. And then their friends start telling them like, "Just keep it as a hobby. You don't wanna change. Like, you know, you'll get behind." And eventually, they get to a point where they're like, "No, I have to sort of do this." And so I think the way I approach this is- is I set up sort of experiments. I have a little book I call The Book of Experiments. But, um, where ... You know, the way I used to when I was a science grad student, have a book with hypotheses, and I'll have a hypothesis about myself, something I wanna learn or something I wanna try, and I'll go, "Here's what I'm hoping to learn. Here's my hypothesis." I'll give it a try and then I'll reflect on it, 'cause that's what self-regulatory learners do, they reflect a lot on those things and keep going forward like that. Um, and that- that worked well for me in the reporting of this book. So I took ... I got kind of stuck with the organization of the book-

    9. CWChris Williamson41:41

       Mm-hmm.

    10. DEDavid Epstein41:41

        ... and decided to take an online fiction-writing class, and like for beginners, you know? And we had to do exercises like write only with dialogue or write with not- not with dialogue at all. And after doing that, it prompted me to go back through my whole manuscript and start stripping down all these quotes, 'cause I realized I was like leaning on quotes in a lazy way to explain information-

    11. CWChris Williamson42:00

        Ah. Yeah.

    12. DEDavid Epstein42:00

        ... that I should've just been writing and leave the quotes for sort of more voice. And so that was just a little dip my toe in that experiment. But I have to say, it also ignited ... I was doing it to try to try to get off this plateau a little bit.

    13. CWChris Williamson42:10

        Yeah.

    14. DEDavid Epstein42:10

        But it ignited an- an interest that I wasn't really ... that I didn't really know I have. So I'm sure I'm gonna try some more of that now.

    15. CWChris Williamson42:16

        Is your next-

    16. DEDavid Epstein42:16

        You know? And so I don't think-

    17. CWChris Williamson42:17

        ... is your next book gonna be fiction? (laughs)

    18. DEDavid Epstein42:18

        (laughs) I don't know. I mean, I- I'm sure I'll do more writing in that. I don't-

    19. CWChris Williamson42:21

        That would be ... no, that would surprise some people.

    20. DEDavid Epstein42:22

        Yeah. Yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson42:23

        (laughs)

    22. DEDavid Epstein42:24

        Um, but I'm sure I'll try more of it, for sure. Because I think either way, it made me a better- made me a better nonfiction writer. But the point is, you didn't- I didn't have to like take a total right turn, like it's this or that. I was able to kind of dip my toe into it in a way that's useful for me. Um, and so I think those, that Herminia Ibarra's approach of- of small experiments is like a- a way to try to do these things. But I think they should be done deliberately, not like, "I'm doing a million things at once." It should be like, "What do I hope to learn? What am I interested in? Who or what can I engage to test that?"... and then reflect on it and go forward, not just, like, scatterbrainedness. Like, proactive testing while you're becoming broad.

    23. CWChris Williamson43:03

        Are you familiar with James Clear's explore-exploit framework?

    24. DEDavid Epstein43:07

        Yeah, yeah. I mean, the explore-exploit framework is, predates James Clear, for sure.

    25. CWChris Williamson43:11

        Oh.

    26. DEDavid Epstein43:11

        Uh, yeah.

    27. CWChris Williamson43:12

        That's where I first read it in Atomic e- Atomic Habits. Where... Do you know where it comes from?

    28. DEDavid Epstein43:16

        Yeah. Oh, James Clear. That's James. Yeah, I mean, oh, it's old in the business literature. I don't know who first discovered it, but-

    29. CWChris Williamson43:20

        Got you.

13. 43:20 – 47:04

    Crowdsourcing solutions: InnoCentive, Kaggle, and outside problem-solvers

    1. DEDavid Epstein43:20

       ... um, yeah, the explore-exploit of, you know, creation of new knowledge versus wringing the most out of, out of knowledge you already have there. Um, and one, one chapter in the book is about, um, outside problem-solvers, basically. And, uh, what that means is, so there was a guy who was the VP of Research and Development at Eli Lilly, massive pharmaceutical company, and, um, I remember when I interviewed him, he said, "Look, I'm a specialist. I'm an organic chemist. If it doesn't have a carbon in it, I'm technically not qualified to work with it." And he realized that, um, specialists, you know, they have a narrow view, and a lot of times solutions come from this knowledge that you, you couldn't have foreseen would be important. And so, when, when Lilly chemists got stuck on certain problems, he, he went around asking. He said, "I'm just gonna post them online and see if anyone's..." And, and of course, they're like, "That's ridiculous," right? "We're like a company of, I don't know, 120,000 people or something with the most resources, and-"

    2. CWChris Williamson44:13

       Yeah.

    3. DEDavid Epstein44:13

       ... "how is someone gonna solve them?" He said, "All right. Give it a try." Does it. Answers start rolling in, right? I remember one that he liked came from something they were stuck on with some chemical, came in from an attorney who had worked on a patent case having to do with tear gas or something like that. Um, and it worked so well, he spun it off into a separate company called Innocentive that helps other companies post problems they get stuck on for outside solvers.

    4. CWChris Williamson44:35

       Crowdfunding problem-solving.

    5. DEDavid Epstein44:37

       Yeah. And they try to frame the problem in a way where it attracts people really far away from the discipline of the people who got stuck. And so, that, that's like one of Innocentive's services. And so, like, they solved, they helped NASA solve a problem they'd been stuck on for 30 years with predicting solar storms, particle bursts that can damage astronauts or equipment. And a guy who had just retired from a cell phone company solved it in six months.

    6. CWChris Williamson44:56

       (laughs)

    7. DEDavid Epstein44:56

       And at first, the NASA scientists were like, "No, no. That's a different approach." And then they're like-

    8. CWChris Williamson45:01

       Hang on.

    9. DEDavid Epstein45:01

       ... "Yeah, that's the point," right?

    10. CWChris Williamson45:03

        Yeah.

    11. DEDavid Epstein45:03

        And so, now, this guy's name is Alf Bingham, who founded Innocentive. Now, there have been a bunch of, um, I don't want to say copycat, just other, other things like that. Like one's called Kaggle, and that looks for outside solvers for machine learning program, which is something you consider really specialized, but it turns out that the people who solve those problems, you know, someone who solves like a Kaggle health problem where it's something, something with data and healthcare or whatever, they often aren't an expert in machine learning, and they often aren't an expert in healthcare either, but they have like some-

    12. CWChris Williamson45:31

        Are there, are there like bounties for these as well?

    13. DEDavid Epstein45:33

        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    14. CWChris Williamson45:34

        Wow.

    15. DEDavid Epstein45:34

        The, the companies can post whatever kind of reward they want.

    16. CWChris Williamson45:37

        This is like, um, uh, Fiverr designs, but for like really, really difficult stuff. The listeners will be, uh, familiar with the Stephen Wolfram episode. I sat down with Stephen Wolfram last week of Wolfram Language 1-

    17. DEDavid Epstein45:50

        Oh, wow. That must've been interesting.

    18. CWChris Williamson45:52

        Man, he, that guy is a force of nature.

    19. DEDavid Epstein45:54

        I saw a lecture from him once. Whew.

    20. CWChris Williamson45:55

        He's a force of nature, man. Like a terrifying individual, terrifying and fascinating individual. And he was saying that they livestream like a ridiculous amount of their calls now. So, it's just like, you wanna know what's going on in the Wolfram Language office today, 'cause he's a at-home CEO, right?

    21. DEDavid Epstein46:13

        Mm-hmm.

    22. CWChris Williamson46:13

        And, um, he's just there. He'll be on his treadmill desk, treadmill in a way, and there'll be like a, a few hundred, a few thousand people just watching, and there's a-

    23. DEDavid Epstein46:22

        I wanna see that.

    24. CWChris Williamson46:24

        There's a, it's f- it's freely available online. Freely available to watch those guys going on, right?

    25. DEDavid Epstein46:27

        Oh.

    26. CWChris Williamson46:27

        And so, you're talking about this thing where people are, are crowdsourcing it. He is in real time just allowing other people on the internet. Some of them, I'm gonna guess he's got like a super popular coding, like, subculture fan base, right? But I'm gonna guess-

    27. DEDavid Epstein46:42

        I'm sure.

    28. CWChris Williamson46:42

        ... I'm gonna guess that that would be, you know, like, me or you might have like the sports on or whatever, like in the background.

    29. DEDavid Epstein46:47

        Yeah.

    30. CWChris Williamson46:47

        But they'll be, they might be working away doing some stuff, and they've just got Stephen Wolfram like on his treadmill desk at home-
14. 47:04 – 48:42

    Integrating the ecosystem: why you still need specialists (and how to balance frog/bird roles)

    1. DEDavid Epstein47:04

       Yeah, it's really interesting. And that's not to, that, that is absolutely not to say that specialists aren't important, right? No, absolutely not. I- in fact, I like to highlight that NPR, you know, our public radio did a review of Range, and they, they say that I spend a lot of time giving credit to dissenters, (laughs) which, which I like because not even dissenters. Like, I agree we need specialists also. I, I like the way that, that the physicist and mathematician, Freeman Dyson, uh, and, and great writer, uh, framed it. He said, "We need frogs and birds. Frogs are down in the mud looking at all the little details. Birds are up above. They can't see those details, but they can integrate the information of frogs." And he said, "The problem is, we're telling everybody to become frogs." And, and when the, when, you know, when disciplines and science changes, that, that becomes a big problem. And that's sort of how I, I think of it. And so, so I think you need, like these problems that stumped the people at Lilly, obviously they were solving a lot of problems on their own. They were posting the ones that they got stuck. So, I think with the combination of that, of the Innocentive approach and those specialists, that's where you get the best of both worlds, and you have this healthy problem-solving ecosystem.

    2. CWChris Williamson48:05

       Yeah, absolutely. Um, how do you know if you're a frog or a bird? For the listeners at home, how do they work that out?

    3. DEDavid Epstein48:11

       That's a, that's a great question, and, and a semantic issue to some point, right? Like, if you look in the patent research, it has to do with how many technological classes have you worked across? If you look in this comic book research I cite, it has to do with how many different genres have you worked across and all these sorts of things. Um, so, so, you know, I, I don't, I don't really know. I don't have a perfect answer to that, although I think most people have some intuition about it actually. Um, but I definitely don't have a perfect answer about it.

    4. CWChris Williamson48:36

       I get... I, I don't think that there really is going to be one-

    5. DEDavid Epstein48:39

       No.

    6. CWChris Williamson48:39

       ... because it is so personal dependent, right?

    7. DEDavid Epstein48:42

       Yeah.

15. 48:42 – 55:57

    Staying open to change: committing to novelty, end-of-history illusion, and learning through difficulty

    1. CWChris Williamson48:42

       Um, thinking back to some of the things that you've said already, a lot of recent podcasts come to mind. Laura Vanderkam, who wrote Off The Clock, she talks about, and The Four Disciplines of Execution as well relates to this, strategizing is easy but execution is hard. The reason is that we are forced to actually do shit if we execute.

    2. DEDavid Epstein48:59

       Hmm. (laughs)

    3. CWChris Williamson48:59

       Like we have to put our money where our mouth is as opposed to just talking a good game.

    4. DEDavid Epstein49:03

       Mm-hmm. Uh-huh.

    5. CWChris Williamson49:04

       We also have paralysis by analysis, that people are so concerned about making the wrong decision-... that they will hold off making any decision. I think it was Jeff Bezos that said, um, "Inaction is more costly than action because once you start to act, you can change your course on the fly as long as you're sufficiently quick to move." Um, but the Laura Vanderkam point is that she ... in, uh, Off the Clock, she talks about committing to plans in the future. It's all about maximizing memories, uh, maximizing your perception of time through increasing memories, and memories are generated through intense or novel experiences, but when we get to an evening time and we think that we might want to go do a salsa class, Netflix is there and the bed's warm and it's cold out raining outside.

    6. DEDavid Epstein49:48

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    7. CWChris Williamson49:48

       So, she talks about committing to an execution. And I think that when you're talking about dipping your toe, what came to mind for me is a good heuristic or a good tool for people to use at home is, well, okay, just commit, commit to something in advance, pay- maybe even pay for it. But, like, I- I've always wanted to try yoga. Right. Book a yoga class now. Go on somewhere, book it now, and pay $10, £10, $20, whatever it is, because you're probably gonna end up going because you've committed to it, and that it might be shit and you might hate it.

    8. DEDavid Epstein50:19

       But you don't know that until ... there's no way to know that.

    9. CWChris Williamson50:20

       (laughs)

    10. DEDavid Epstein50:21

        Like, your- your insight into yourself and your opportunities is constrained by your previous experiences, right? So if- if you hate it, like I thought I was gonna be a scientist and then I, you know, started doing more lab work, and I found out that that was not the path for me, but that was the only way to find out, right, and to- to try some of that stuff. And I think there's even an added bonus to what you're suggesting, which is that if you look at how ... there's a thing called the end of history illusion where we all recognize, i- in psychology finding that we have changed a lot in the past based on our experiences, right? The things we've gone through and all this stuff has caused us to change.

    11. CWChris Williamson50:51

        Okay. Yeah.

    12. DEDavid Epstein50:51

        Our values and all these ... and our skills and all these things. And then we, then we say, "But- but I'm not gonna change much in the future." That's a ... at every time point in life we say, it leads to these really weird results like- like, uh, people underestimate how much their taste will change. So, if you ask someone, "How much money will you pay today to see your favorite band play 10 years from now?" The average answer is $129. And if you ask, "How much money would you pay to see your favorite band from 10 years ago today?" The average answer is $80 because we underestimate like how much our taste changes. And as I was looking at this personality research, it actually showed that one of the very predictable changes is, um, the big five trait of openness to experience declines as people get older.

    13. CWChris Williamson51:32

        Okay. Yeah. That seems actually fairly natural.

    14. DEDavid Epstein51:33

        Especially family knowledge. Yep. And you can actually ... and- and we know that trait is highly associated with creativity, and you can change that decline, slow it, or possibly even, like, reverse it some by just trying new stuff. So, there were these studies that were, like, making seniors learn how to do, like, new types of puzzles and all these things.

    15. CWChris Williamson51:51

        Yeah.

    16. DEDavid Epstein51:51

        And even if they didn't get better at the puzzles, their openness to experience changed somewhat. So- so I think we get in these ... you know, we gravitate toward things we're already comfortable with and competent at, um, and, you know, difficulty in trying some new thing isn't a sign that you aren't learning, but- but ease is. If things, if things you're doing are too easy for you, then you're not learning.

    17. CWChris Williamson52:12

        Yeah.

    18. DEDavid Epstein52:12

        And so I think you need to try these new things.

    19. CWChris Williamson52:14

        It's weird, isn't it? Because there is a particular kind of mindset. I've- I've recently started swimming and I- I suck, like, really bad at- at my cardio for swimming. Cardio outside of the water on terra firm is not bad. Cardio in swimming, not so good.

    20. DEDavid Epstein52:28

        Okay.

    21. CWChris Williamson52:29

        Um, but the takeoff, like, I haven't done something that I've stuck at consistently and has had, like, linear progressive overload for a- a fair while, and the noob gains are astounding and it's addictive. You're like, "Shit, this is what it's like to do something that I'm fucking crap at." And I'm like (laughs) and you're like, "Oh my God. Like, I've just ... I've PB'd. I've PB'd again. I PB'd again."

    22. DEDavid Epstein52:52

        Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson52:53

        Like ...

    24. DEDavid Epstein52:53

        Yeah. Yeah. I- I mean, I was a crap ... I played a whole bunch of different sports, football, basketball, baseball, this stuff, American football, and then I ended up on running and I ran track in college and I was a walk-on and I sucked. And then I ... and ... but I- I write about this in my first book, but I- but I improved really rapidly and I ended up as like a university record holder, you know? And so ... um, but it was totally addictive and in many ways I thought I was in an easier spot than the guys who had come in as these big time recruits because they had all this pressure and- and it was very hard for them to improve. And I'm like improving like crazy which is-

    25. CWChris Williamson53:23

        Yeah. It's addictive.

    26. DEDavid Epstein53:24

        ... like you said, it's addictive.

    27. CWChris Williamson53:25

        It's ... it is addictive like that. And one of the other things as well to consider is that as you ... if you are going into something new and if you're cultivating, as James Clear would talk about, the- the, uh, compounding effect of an effect, uh, an effective habit over time.

    28. DEDavid Epstein53:40

        Yeah.

    29. CWChris Williamson53:40

        Matt Fraser, CrossFit games champion comes to mind. There's a story, uh, in Chasing Excellence by Ben Bergeron where he says that Matt wouldn't let himself leave. He did a engineering degree, I think, or mechanical engineering, something like that, something like super manly at, um-

    30. DEDavid Epstein53:55

        (laughs)

Episode duration: 55:57