Range Audiobook By David Epstein cover art

Range

How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

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Range

By: David Epstein
Narrated by: Will Damron
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'A gold mine of surprising insights. Makes you smarter with every page' – James Clear, bestselling author of Atomic Habits

The essential guide to improving your performance, and a powerful argument for how to succeed in any field: develop broad interests and skills while everyone around you is rushing to specialize.

Instant Sunday Times and New York Times Bestseller
Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
A Financial Times Essential Read

From the ‘10,000 hours' rule to the power of tiger parenting, we have been taught that success in any field requires early specialization and many hours of deliberate practice. If you only dabble or delay, you'll never catch up with those who got a head start.

This is completely wrong.

In this landmark book, David Epstein shows you that the way to succeed is by sampling widely, gaining a breadth of experiences, taking detours, experimenting relentlessly and juggling interests – this is the power of developing range.

Studying the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors and scientists, Epstein demonstrates why, in most fields. generalists, not specialists are primed to excel.

In the years since its initial release, Range has challenged the status quo, reshaped career paths and changed lives. Listen it to view the world differently.

'I loved Range' – Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author of Outliers and The Tipping Point

'Fascinating . . . if you're a generalist who has ever felt overshadowed by your specialist colleagues, this book is for you' – Bill Gates

©2019 David Epstein (P)2019 Penguin Random House LLC Business Development & Entrepreneurship Creativity & Genius Entrepreneurship Personal Development Personal Success Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Inspiring Technology

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Range Audiobook By David Epstein cover art
Range By: David Epstein
Fascinating Insights • Empowering Perspective • Diverse Life Examples • Encouraging Tone • Thought-provoking Ideas
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I loved this. I'm relieved because of it. I would share this with everyone I know.

Everyone should experience this book

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Detailed explanations backed up by educational yet entertaining anecdotes and evidence. A must-read for anyone who has any intention on learning things

Loved it!

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There are many stories in the overarching theme of the book. The takeaway should not be narrow and simple as the narrative it debunks. 'Start early and specialize or you will be behind' is not supported by evidence. That is one take away. But there is much more. Breath of experience is important even in very specialized fields of knowledge like nobel science candidates. The common narrative in education institutions is go make yourself a specialist, needed and important, acomplish something and then you will feel good about yourself is terribly wrong. The advice should be changed for something like: experiment and test different things, let yourself time to really experience a variety before specializing in one thing. Even then, keep your interests broad and wide between no related disciplines you like. That will keep you from burnout and enrich you in ways no obvious even to you. That broader experience will make your contributions more original and impactful! A must re read. Doesn't exhausts it's content in one pass. Definetely will recommend.

Counter intuitive genius

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excellent. well done David. Thank you for the extra range that you have given my brain.

one of my most valuable and enjoyable

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There's a whole industry related to hyper specialisation and a big focus on it.
People like Tiger Woods who were groomed from a very young age to do nothing else but play Golf.

But this book advocates for the majority of people who, like myself, try many things before finding what they are good at.

The main points are that finding the right fit matters more than a head start.
That having skills in multiple areas can be very useful.
That understanding and using lots of different mental models and analogies is powerful for creativity.
The author pulls in work from the book Superforecasting which shows how generalists regularly outperform specialists at forecasting the future but often still need the advice from specialists.
Actually the best option is when generalists and specialists work together.
There's also pokymaths. People who specialise in a particular area but also have a lot of general knowledge in a lot of different fields.

This book resonated with me. I followed a route of lots of experimentation. Got my pilots licence before I could drive. Did everything from choir and dance to Tae Kwon do and army cadets. I did 3D animation and competed in the RoboCup challenge. Thought I'd go into Uni doing robotics but now I am a web developer who creates stock footage and helps run an activist movement around transitioning to a Post Scarcity Society.

Web development is my specialisation but I'm still trying to create startup companies and want to write a SciFi novel.

So yeah I resonate with this book.

Given what I've heard, being someone with range is the standard. So you likely resonate with it too.

Something you should read

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This is a book that everyone should read. Epstein’s advice, backed up with both data and anecdotes, are words which I wish I had understood when I was younger. I cannot recommend this book enough to anyone

Life changing

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innovation and discovery happens at the edges of specialization, where the people are able to establish the interface and see through horizontally. priceless.

excellent read

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Great tone and speed, examples were well founded, researched and personalised to appeal to a wide range of listeners

Wide ranging examples, easy listen

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This is a book that is packed with lessons and many life examples. As a generalist myself, I found the lessons quite eye opening. I would love to listen to it again as I am sure I missed some parts of it. One thing I've learnt is that we over hype specialization without looking at what it took the person to be successful and that people that have Range tend bring to the table what specialists fail to see. There should not be an overbearing concentration on specialization or getting a head start. People can get to their peak and have impact without having an early start.

Great Book

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Epstein dares challenge the very principles of society’s revered academic system, which is built upon specialisation.

He delightfully illustrates his point with several examples, in which achievements are reached only because of exposure to multi-disciplinary thinking.

This book has made me reconsider my approach to the education of my child.

Fantastically counterintuitive

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