Browse all the blog posts here. Hub pages organize posts around certain themes.
Latest blog posts
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Book review: Range by David Epstein
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World is a book about generalists. And it’s pretty much the only popular book about generalists today. The book’s main conclusions are that 1) people with range, especially early in their careers, do better in the long run, and 2) organizations with range in their constituents also do…
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False Generalists
Some “generalists” are really natural specialists who suffer from fears or weird pressures that cause them to behave like generalists. So we wonder, “Am I living like a generalist because it’s in my nature, or am I doing it in reaction to something negative?” Are you a True Generalist, deep down?
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Am I a generalist?
I’m still finding ways to answer the question, “What is a generalist?” more completely. It’s helpful to define what an extreme generalist would look like, so we can then see how similar we are to it. I’ve come up with 12 “categories of human endeavor,” and I define a hypothetical “extreme generalist” as someone whose…
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Micro-retirements
Generalists sometimes need to take things “off the table” in their lives, sometimes permanently. A micro-retirement is the letting go of a single activity in your life to make room for other things. I’ve found that using the mindset of retirement is more acceptable, psychologically, than “forcing myself to quit” or something like that. “Quitting”…
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Necessary generalists: Philosophical self-defense
What everybody needs, most of all, is the ability to reject “bad philosophy.” And philosophy is most worthwhile as a means to that end. When you start to consciously dabble in philosophy, what’s most important is that you go all the way through: get familiar a lot of different philosophies that contradict each other. Then you return…
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Necessary generalists: Financial planning (gambling)
In a relatively free-market financial system, the way you grow your wealth is by risking it. This is inherently dangerous, but that danger can be mitigated with knowledge and experience. Broad-market index funds have performed well in the past but carry some hidden risks that may warrant dabbling in more creative investment strategies.
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Necessary generalists: Physical health
You should know your body very very well. The modern world is full of unique health hazards that we did not evolve to handle. And modern medicine, while extremely powerful, has critical gaps that we currently need to account for at the individual level.
