Note
Embrace diverse experiences, focus on learning, be adaptable, and seek out interdisciplinary collaboration to thrive in a specialized world. In a rapidly changing workplace, individuals with a broad set of skills and mental models are better equipped to adapt and succeed. Companies should build diverse teams, encourage purposeful experimentation, and prioritize strategic thinking to navigate technological disruption and promote shared prosperity.
Highlights
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2025-01-17 14:20 So to give just a quick background of that, Hogarth kind of reconciled this conundrum in expertise research, where some people studying expertise saw that people get better with narrow experience, and others saw that they not only don’t get better, they get more confident, but not better, which can be a really bad kind of scenario. And what Hogarth said is, well, it depends on the type of environment that someone is working in.
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2025-01-17 14:20 In a kind learning environment, which is next steps and goals are clear, rules don’t change patterns, repeat feedback is quick and accurate, people get better reliably with narrow experience.
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2025-01-17 14:21 On the other end of what he called wicked learning environments, where next steps and goals may not just be given to you, or rules may change, or patterns don’t just repeat feedback could be delayed or inaccurate. Lots of human dynamics are involved. Basically, work next year may not look like work last year, and in those kinds of environments which we’re increasingly thrust into in our work because the workplace changes more rapidly than it ever has before. It’s people that have this sort of broader set of skills that allow them to pivot and to create kind of generalized, flexible skills and mental models who are really able to adapt over time.
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2025-01-17 14:20 Yeah, well, I mean, I would say to me, without a doubt, the best sports country in the world, I think, right now, is Norway. I mean, you know, more medals than the United States and China combined. I think, in the last two Winter Olympics, I think in one of those Winter Olympics might have even outdone the US, China, and Germany combined, winning things in Summer games that we don’t usually associate with Scandinavia. Like, I think you may exaggerate a tiny bit, but I think the general gist of it is correct. But, David, how does this stack up against the 10,000 hours rule and the concept of deliberate practice, which some people is advocating?
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2025-01-16 08:20 And this continues throughout our life. But the fastest time of personality change, which is, again, what you think your strengths and weaknesses are what your values are, what you like in friends, et cetera, is about 18 to the late twenties.
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2025-01-17 14:20 But what they found was reliably before a hot streak. People spend time in this period of experimentation, and it really jives with this big body of literature on what’s called the explore exploit trade off, where explore is searching for new knowledge, trying new skills, trying new projects, trying new collaborators.
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2025-01-17 14:19 Is curiosity a choice? Wow, that’s a tough question. I mean, I think there’s, you know, my first book was about genetics, and I think the so called first law of behavioral genetics is that every personality trait that has ever been studied has a genetic component. So I think there is an innate component to curiosity. That said, I think that people are inherently more curious if they don’t think it’s disincentivized. Right? Like, I would even talk to some of the researchers I was interviewing for my book who were disappointed at their careers in academia because they felt that they had gotten into this world where it would be the life of the mind.