Reading books is always special. Even if it isn’t too good a read, you take away something from it. But in a few cases, you read a book that strikes a portion of your brain deeply. And that stays with you for time to come.

This past week, I finished reading a book titled ‘Range’ by David Epstein. It’s about the fundamental premise of what is better – depth or breadth; and the author makes a case for breadth over depth, or range. As I read through, some of the examples stuck a chord…

Now, I am a person who has always valued breadth or range more, which is perhaps the reason for me liking the book more. But as I looked back at my own life and thought through on the experiences, I realised the breadth of experiences I had have helped me shape up to what I am today. And even though some of those experiences were not to my liking, they have nevertheless made me.

That’s true of other friends and acquaintances too. I see that those who have had varied experiences and gone into different directions have a much better point of view on new things and are never hesitant to take upon a challenge. It’s not that they have any more confidence than someone who has been focused on only one subject matter. But somehow, they intrinsically believe in themselves and are ready to try their hand at something new and give it their best shot.

Not to take away from those who focus on depth, I think such people are equally important to have by our side. Whether it comes to medicine, or any other aspect of life where specialization is the key to success, focus on depth is what separates the best from the rest. And in such fields, specialization is what matters the most. However, for the rest of us, normal folks, varied experiences count for much more.

What surprises me the most though is that having gone through a wide learning curve ourselves, when it comes to our children, why do we always try and push them towards some specialization. I have seen a number of parents pushing their child to focus on only studies or only sports or some form of art. There is a lot of noise in the media also with this constant messaging to focus on developing skills in children as early in their lives as possible, which doesn’t help!

Even when children grow up, we try and steer their career choices and push them to take decisions early in life, when they perhaps aren’t ready to decide whether they want to be a specialist or not. And in that haste to get them to settle, we perhaps take away the rich experiences that they could have had on their own.

Or for that matter, our young professionals. I fail to understand the urge for people to specialise early on in their careers. While it may help them get paid more or land a better role/company, it for sure constrains the field in which they can operate in. And while they may achieve all the success through the specialized route, wouldn’t it be better to have a larger field to play in initially and narrow down your choices as you grow along?

As I reflected on these topics and thought through, I realised that it is upon us as individuals to decide how we want to take things forward. For self and for others we are responsible for. While specialization is in fashion, how do we let it wind down it’s own course and take decisions naturally rather than forcing them.

Specially for our children. It is contingent upon us to give them the breadth of experiences that they can get and let them choose their path by themselves. Even if it means they fail a few times. For what is failure if not an excellent teacher!