[Balgair]

David Epstein's Range talks a lot about this issue. He mentions the idea of 'kind' and 'unkind' learning environments. He uses golf and Tiger Woods as a 'kind' learning environment. To be a great golf player, you pretty much just have to grind out the hours and work hard at it. The better players have simply just spent more time grinding away. Epstein then uses tennis and Federer as an 'unkind' learning environment. Federer did a lot of other sports and has many other interests than tennis, and other successful players are similar. Using tricks from a variety of sports and arenas is better. Epstein spends the rest of the book talking about other areas like music, testing, and business and compares generalists to specializers, demonstrating that generalists end up better off in unkind learning environments. The now infamous USAF academy testing screw-up is of particular interest here. As most of life is an unkind learning environment, generalists may be better off than specialists over the long haul. Hence, things like a liberal arts education being so powerful and the paradox of the 'well-rounded vs. spiky' person in long term success.