A little more than 10 years ago, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell was published. Throughout that book, he frequently cited the so-called "10,000-Hour Rule," which stated that to master something, one needed to practice it correctly for that amount of time. That, Gladwell argued, was what successful people did.
It makes intuitive sense: If you want to get good at something, work hard at it until you are. Range: Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World, a new book by David Epstein, a former investigative and science reporter at ProPublica, argues that this theory of specialization applies to a limited number of skills and fails to set its adherents up for success. What most people need instead is, well, range.
According to Epstein, the world for nearly everyone is not a place where specialization — which he argues leads to myopic thinking — is truly beneficial. His claim extends from individuals to systems, and he includes some striking anecdotes and evidence in the introductory chapter of the book. One contributing factor to the financial collapse of 2008, he says, was that "[l]egions of specialized groups optimizing risk for their own tiny pieces of the big picture created a catastrophic whole." Another anecdote he puts forth is that "cardiac patients are less likely to die if they are admitted during a national cardiology meeting" because the absence of interventional cardiologists reduces the number of stents used "in cases where voluminous research has proven that they are inappropriate or dangerous." These are compelling points, but they have that slippery feel that can appear in social science books. In this case, their perfect fit and a lack of cited counterargument signals that things may be falling together too easily.