Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

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Range, By: David Epstein

Range, By: David Epstein

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
By: David Epstein
Riverhead Books (April 27, 2021)
368 pages

David Epstein’s Range is an argument against increasing specialization. Honestly, I have always agreed with this on some level. For example, I think that little should be taught before high school that is outside of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Don’t misunderstand me. This is not a desire to limit the subjects taught. It is a desire to broaden them. We should be teaching students how to think rather than exactly what they should learn. For instance, teaching economics by reading good economics books and writing critically about the subject. Specialization has its place, of course, in technical endeavors. But this is not always true for direct innovation. For example, an oncologist, a chemist, a biologist, and an immunologist might come up with more original and promising ideas in treating cancer than four oncologists could come up with on their own. Pick a lane, but dabble as you go along. Knowledge and skill have ways of cross-pollinating that are not always immediately obvious.

Two of my favorite quotes:

When he recounts his own education at the University of Chicago, where he was captain of the cross-country team, he raises his voice. “Even the best universities aren’t developing critical intelligence,” he told me. “They aren’t giving students the tools to analyze the modern world, except in their area of specialization. Their education is too narrow.” He does not mean this in the simple sense that every computer science major needs an art history class, but rather that everyone needs habits of mind that allow them to dance across disciplines.

Biology and English majors did poorly on everything that was not directly related to their field. None of the majors, including psychology, understood social science methods. Science students learned the facts of their specific field without understanding how science should work in order to draw true conclusions. Neuroscience majors did not do particularly well on anything. Business majors performed very poorly across the board, including in economics. Econ majors did the best overall. Economics is a broad field by nature, and econ professors have been shown to apply the reasoning principles they’ve learned to problems outside their area.*

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Filed Under: BooksTagged With: #Books, #MyReadingLife2020

Turning Pro, By: Steven Pressfield and Shawn Coyne

Turning Pro, By: Steven Pressfield and Shawn Coyne

Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work
By: Steven Pressfield and Shawn Coyne
Black Irish Entertainment LLC; unknown edition (May 31, 2012)
146 pages

Turning Pro is a book about just that, becoming a professional artist. The focus is on writing, but this is a book for anyone who aspires to a creative life. The long and short of it is that amateurs approach their art with undisciplined wishes. Professionals treat their art like work. If you want to be a writer, for example, there is no way to avoid writing every day – for that’s what writers do (systems over goals.) Do the work. This book was a fantastic companion to The War Of Art.

Two of my favorite quotes:

Turning pro is not for everyone. We have to be a little crazy to do it, or even to want to. In many ways the passage chooses us; we don’t choose it. We simply have no alternative. What we get when we turn pro is, we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and to live out. Do you remember where you were on 9/11? You’ll remember where you were when you turn pro.

Am I crazy? All my friends are making money and settling down and living normal lives. What the hell am I doing? Am I nuts? What’s wrong with me? In the end I answered the question by realizing that I had no choice. I couldn’t do anything else. When I tried, I got so depressed I couldn’t stand it. So when I wrote yet another novel or screenplay that I couldn’t sell, I had no choice but to write another after that. The truth was, I was enjoying myself. Maybe nobody else liked the stuff I was doing, but I did. I was learning. I was getting better.

Buy on Amazon.

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Filed Under: BooksTagged With: #MyReadingLife2020, #Reading

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