TL;DR:
- Like a Squirrel by Jason Freid https://world.hey.com/jason/like-a-squirrel-bd821787
- Range by David Epstein
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41795733-range - The world is broad and deep, and “we need birds and frogs working together to explore it.”
Since Jason Fried shared the squirrel's approach analogy and I can't get it out of mind 🙂
It keeps coming up over and over. I loved it!
Point in a direction, have a general place you're headed, but regularly re-evaluate along the way. Let context blaze the path. There's a destination in mind, but very little planning on how to get there. They just get there by stringing together a series of independent moments.
Most recently, the analogy kept coming to mind throughout the book and the work of David Epstein:
Range by David Epstein
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41795733-range
and
https://davidepstein.com/
The book's subtitle is:
"Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World"
However, the focus is not to compare specialists vs. generalists nor to advocate for one over the other.
But more importantly, to show that:
• Neither of them is the exception
• Neither of them is The Only Path to mastery
• There are several uncommon and sometimes counter-intuitive lessons to learn about both of them
• MANY stories and examples on both sides with detailed analysis and supporting research (top for me so far are Van Gough, Nintendo, NASA's Challenger catastrophe).
(for example, Nintendo intentionally used old and sometimes obsolete technology in their products but they focused on using it in ways others did not think about before, what the author called )
"Early wondering then later shining" could be one of the messages it sends.
Or as he quoted physicist, mathematician, and writer Freeman Dyson:
Frogs are down in the mud where they “delight in the details of particular objects, and they solve problems one at a time,”
Birds soar above and “delight in concepts that unify our thinking and bring together diverse problems from different parts of the landscape.”
We need both, Dyson insisted. The world is broad and deep, and “we need birds and frogs working together to explore it.”
The problem, he said, is that we’re frequently telling everyone to become frogs, and that limits our vision and our ability to adapt quickly in a changing world.
Lookoing forward to hearing your thoughts.
Warm regards from Toronto,
-Muhammad