Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

In the wicked world, with ill-defined challenges and few rigid rules, range can be a life hack.

The domains Klein studied, in which instinctive pattern recognition worked powerfully, are what psychologist Robin Hogarth termed “kind” learning environments. Patterns repeat over and over, and feedback is extremely accurate and usually very rapid. In golf or chess, a ball or piece is moved according to rules and within defined boundaries, a conse

he often found that experience had not helped at all. Even worse, it frequently bred confidence but not skill.

Connolly’s primary finding was that early in their careers, those who later made successful transitions had broader training and kept multiple “career streams” open even as they pursued a primary specialty. They “traveled on an eight-lane highway,” he wrote, rather than down a single-lane one-way street. They had range.

beat the computer: by outsourcing tactics, the part of human expertise that is most easily replaced, the part that he and the Polgar prodigies spent years honing.

In wicked domains, the rules of the game are often unclear or incomplete, there may or may not be repetitive patterns and they may not be obvious, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both.

the bigger the picture, the more unique the potential human contribution. Our greatest strength is the exact opposite of narrow specialization.

The ability to move freely, to shift from one category to another, is one of the chief characteristics of ‘abstract thinking.’”

That is the very definition of deliberate practice, the type identified with both the ten-thousand-hours rule and the rush to early specialization in technical training. The learning environment is kind because a learner improves simply by engaging in the activity and trying to do better.