Did you ever change course? Or leave, work for a few years, then come back? Maybe you ended up in a job that has nothing to do with what you studied.

If so, you have probably had the thought at some point. The people who knew what they wanted at sixteen must be miles ahead by now.

This month’s book says they are not. In our regular What can I Learn From… series, we take a well-known book and pull out the bits you can actually use. This one is Range by David Epstein, which was shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year in 2019.

 

What the book actually says

Epstein is not saying specialists are bad. He says picking one thing early only pays off in certain kinds of work. And most work is not that kind.

Think about golf. The rules never change. You hit the ball, you see exactly where it lands, and you can do the same shot again tomorrow. Practise for years and you will get better. Guaranteed.

Now think about managing a team. Or sales. Or care work. Or running a small business. The rules keep shifting. Half the time you never find out whether you got it right. And next year looks nothing like last year.

Researchers call the first sort “kind” and the second “wicked”. Almost every job most of us do is the wicked sort. That matters, because the famous “ten thousand hours of practice” idea came from studying the kind sort. It was never about the jobs the rest of us have.

 

Lesson one: a head start does not last

In 2022, researchers went back through 51 studies covering more than 6,000 athletes. Among them were 772 of the very best in the world.

The junior champions had picked one sport early and got good quickly.

The adults who made it to the top had done the opposite. They played several sports as children. They started their main sport later. They were slower to improve at first.

Early specialisation wins junior medals and loses senior ones. Worth remembering if you ever felt behind at twenty-two.

 

Lesson two: changing your mind is not giving up

One researcher spotted something useful hiding in our own education system. In England, students pick their subject before they start university. In Scotland, they try several subjects for two years first.

The English students were far more likely to end up working in something completely different from what they studied. The Scottish students, who had tried more things, earned a bit less at first. Within a few years they had caught up.

Trying things out did not cost them anything. Picking the wrong thing early did.

Try this: if you are thinking about a change, stop asking “is this what I want to do for the next twenty years?” Nobody can answer that. Ask a smaller question instead. What is the best fit for me for the next two years?

 

Lesson three: you cannot think your way to the answer

There is a good line from a researcher who studies career changes. We learn who we are by doing, not by thinking.

You cannot work out what suits you while sitting still. You try something, see how it goes, and adjust.

 

Where the book is weaker

We said the same about The Chimp Paradox in the summer, so we will say it here. The book opens by comparing Tiger Woods, who was swinging a golf club as a toddler, with Roger Federer, who tried lots of sports first.

It makes a nice story. It does not prove anything. You can always find two people who fit the point you want to make.

One reviewer called it “enjoyable if not wholly convincing”, and said it jumps between stories so fast you start to wonder whether the evidence came first or the argument did.

The ten thousand hours rule is not quite what people think either. The researcher whose work it came from spent years explaining that he never came up with it. A journalist did. And when other researchers went back and checked, practice mattered a great deal for games and music. For ordinary jobs, it barely showed up at all.

 

Worth your time?

Yes, as long as you read it right. Range is not telling you never to settle down. Nearly everyone in it tried a lot of things and then went all in on one. It is about getting to the right thing late, not never getting there.

For a lot of our alumni, that is exactly the point.

What did taking the long way round teach you that the direct route never would have?