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- Mystery Gift Box #042 | Why You Should Explore More in A Heavily Incentivised Specialised World
Mystery Gift Box #042 | Why You Should Explore More in A Heavily Incentivised Specialised World
The best hidden gems I've found; interesting ideas and concepts, thought-provoking questions, mind-blowing books/podcasts, cool animes/films, and other mysteries ❤️
Hey friends,
Range by David Epstein.
Range is one of my favourite books! It encourages people to explore the many different experiences and perspectives in life and delay hyper-specialisation for as long as you can in a world that heavily incentivises and demands it. But why breadth over specialism?
One of the reasons is Match Quality Optimisation.
Match Quality Optimisation
Match quality is the degree of fit between the work you do and who you are (your abilities and proclivities)
Most people have a very low match quality.
This is because society “pressurised” people to specialise early — “You have to figure out what you want to study and choose your career paths at the age of 18…” when most people lack the knowledge and experience to informatively decide. It also doesn’t help that the people who “chose” to specialise early tend to get reward more as they have more time to establish domain knowledge and skills that would allow them to excel in that particular domain. This can often make people who chose to explore different paths feel “behind” not to mention that just because people are good at their job (through early specialisation), it doesn’t mean that they necessarily enjoy it or that it fits with who they are.
The alternative strategy is to first optimise for match quality and then specialise.
Optimising for match quality should be the first priority before specialisation. People should explore many different experiences with the goal of finding a higher match quality in life. If you explore around to maximise your match quality, you will develop a better idea of what type of work you like and fits you best. It might take you a long time to find it but the benefits of increased match quality far outweighs the “slower” development in domain skills (specialisation).
So the question is how to optimise for match quality?
Explore and Evaluate. One of the key reflective questions in exploring different options is knowing when to quit and when to persevere and specialise. The challenging part is to accurately recognise whether you are switching because it's a failure of perseverance or because you recognise that there are better matches available…
And getting better at recognise which is which is a great investment of your time 🔥
Today's world tends to heavily incentivises hyper-specialisation, which forces us to abandon the pursue of breadth and diverse set of experience and knowledge
— Range
⛰ 4-4-4 Exploration Project
Each month, I would explore one new thing; a skill, a subject, or an experience.
January 2023: Writing and Storytelling (Subject) ✅
February 2023: KURIOS – Cabinet of Curiosities (Cirque Du Soleil — Experience) ✅
March 2023: 28 Days of Cold Exposure (Subject and Experience) ✅
April 2023: Complete Growth / Product Marketing Course (Subject) 🟥
May 2023: LL project (Skill + Subject) ✅
June 2023: LL project 2 (Skill + Subject) 🟧
📚 This week, I finished reading…
Have interesting gems you want to share with me and others? Share it by replying to this email and I will include it in the next gift box :)
With love,
Ryan O. 🎮
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