David Epstein’s follow-up to his 2014 book The Sports Gene provides a counterbalance to Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hours rule”. In Outliers, Gladwell argues that 10,000 hours of dedicated practice in a specific discipline is the minimum requirement for attaining success in that field. Epstein advocates for “range” and sets out to debunk the myth of the early start as being essential to success in later life.
He draws on examples from the world of sport, science, music, technology and medicine, to lend sufficient weight and breadth to his argument: too narrow a focus can lead to a dangerous attachment to our training and the tools of our trade.
Epstein cites the example of interventional cardiologists routinely placing stents in patients when the procedure is not necessary or beneficial. A more powerful illustration, however, is the example of the firefighters killed by a forest fire because they simply didn’t think to drop their heavy equipment when fleeing the flames.
Epstein’s style is engaging and it is easy to lose oneself in the deceptive ease of his storytelling when he is in fact disassembling complex ideas that would otherwise remain hieroglyphs. He is clear in pointing out that there are certain domains in which a narrow range of experience has real benefits. In the game of chess, patterns are endlessly repeating and success is dependent on the ability to predict outcomes based on the memorisation of those patterns. However, in domains where the rules are less fixed – medicine, politics, finance – narrow experience can lead to dead ends precisely when a broader outlook is needed.
In the chapter Thinking Outside Experience, Epstein describes how problems can be solved by analysing situations that are analogous to the problem. This was precisely how 16th-century mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler set about solving the puzzle of planetary motion. The more seemingly distant the analogy, the more helpful it can be in solving complex conundrums. This of course requires that the problem solver have a broad range of experience to draw from.
Positive change
Epstein uses Frances Hesselbein's career to illustrate how remaining open to possibilities can lead to positive change. At 34 years old Hesselbein was living in Johnstown Pennsylvania, when she was asked to lead the local girl scout troop. Hesselbein agreed reluctantly and continued to agree reluctantly to a series of job offers that eventually saw her become the CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA. Among Hesselbein's proudest achievements was tripling minority membership within the girl scouts. At the age of 101 she was still the CEO and president of the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute, offering advice at her Manhattan office to executives, military officers and legislators.
In the realm of classical music, Epstein uses the Figlie del Coro to argue that trying a number of musical instruments at a young age, rather than fixing on one instrument as early as possible, is beneficial to becoming a virtuoso performer. The figlie were an all-female band of musicians who wowed audiences in 17th-century Florence. They were foundlings, raised in charitable institutions where they received a musical training in a variety of instruments.
It was at this point quite early on in the book that I began to have my doubts about Epstein’s insistence upon the world’s fixation with specialisation. In my youth I played the piano with some degree of seriousness and discipline and was told by anyone that if I wanted to become a musician I would need to play more than one instrument. Similarly, much of the career advice I received was to try different things, experiment, be open to possibilities and above all be adaptable. Who, I kept asking myself, were these zealots who were forcing children to decide on their careers at playschool?
I have heard of "tiger parenting" and Epstein also uses the example of Tiger Woods to show how talent nurtured early can produce a world champion, but a few extreme examples could not convince me that the pendulum had swung so far in one direction.
Ultimately what Epstein says is that there is room for both broad thinkers and those with a more narrow focus, as long as their mode of thinking is matched with the career where it is put to best use. It seems that, as with most things, there is a middle way or moderate approach and, perhaps, in a world of extremes that is the most revolutionary type of thinking there is.
