To Experiment or Not?

I am still reading the book Range, which is a book that has challenged some of my ideas and affirmed others. In the book, David Epstein weighs whether or not experimentation in life is a positive thing. From children learning to play a sport (or several sports) or other children learning to play an instrument (or experiment with a range of instruments), to adults trying to find their way life’s calling by either picking one path, or sampling for an extended period of time before settling….

Society tends to look more favourable on the people that pick early. Learn to play the violin and master it by playing it for 10,000 hours by the time you’re 18 and you garner the respect of others. Or, pick a career path as a sales guy who then becomes a sales manager who then becomes CSO (chief sales officer) at a multi-million dollar enterprise and you are looked on as having it figured out.

This linear pathway seems to be the most efficient pathway. And certainly the neatest. Early pickers tend to eat their lunches first.

But David Epstein makes a very compelling case for experimenting early and lots. Sure, you’ll find yourself behind your peers early on, but you are building a set of skills that can overlap widely which can then be utilized across multiple domains throughout life.

Before reading this book, I have observed this experimental behaviour in my own life; (I am a sampler by nature). I’ve often wondered whether it is a negative or positive trait. I’ve lost money because of it. Quite a bit of money. I’ve often wondered whether the skill set picked up along this meandering path will make up for the, well, meandering path?

Plenty of my peers have worked at one or two jobs in the last 10 years while I have done many things. While some job moves couldn’t be helped much, others were certainly by my own choosing. Like going from one perfectly fine job to another, which was precisely the case in my last job move in 2021. The last 4 years have been the longest I have ever held down a job.

I still don’t have things figured out. But I have found that my broad (but not always deep) skill set has come in handy many times in running a business. These days, being a generalist is a skillset unto itself.

What do you think?