Probably more related to Free Agents or Bookworm I’m taking my chances with hoping to find the answer from this forum.
I’m looking for a book I thought was Seth Godin’s The Dip. Specifically the book talks about not aiming to be the top 1% in a field but rather aim at top 30% in three fields and that the combination makes you unique.
I also think it’s the same book that has a story about Arnold Schwarzenegger and how he aimed at working his career laterally rather than climbing the ladder.
As I said I thought it was The Dip, so I ordered it and just read it through to find none of this mentioned. But I believe that the size and scope of the book is similar to that of The Dip.
I hope this rings a bell in the community so I can find this little gem again.
Using Raycast Ai I got this answer:
The book you are looking for is actually “The 10x Rule” by Grant Cardone, not Seth Godin’s “The Dip.” In “The 10x Rule,” Cardone suggests that instead of aiming to be in the top 1% in a particular field, one should aim to be in the top 30% in three different fields, combining them to create a unique advantage.
As an aside, I recommend The Medici Effect as a tangential read.
I can’t get the Amazon link to show up, but here’s the description:
Why do so many world-changing insights come from people with little or no related experience? Charles Darwin was a geologist when he proposed the theory of evolution. And it was an astronomer who finally explained what happened to the dinosaurs.
Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect shows how breakthrough ideas most often occur when we bring concepts from one field into a new, unfamiliar territory, and offers examples how we can turn the ideas we discover into path-breaking innovations.
That books sounds interesting and I will read it, but both those examples of people with “little to no related experience” are poor (speaking as someone with a BSc in Geosciences).
Geology is the study of the origin and structure of the planet (or specifically planet Earth depending on your philosophical bent), so by definition the science of evolution falls within its purview, being as it is the study of the structure of one part of a planet (the living part…). In any case, the distinction between biology and geology wasn’t as clear cut in the 19th century as it might now be. It was an emerging field and was built from the “collecting together” of several other niche fields of study, as well as the opening up of new topics of research. Many geologists were natural scientists first, and may not have even listed geology as their primary science (that can still be true today). In fact, Charles Darwin’s specialist subject was worms, which would today make him a naturalist/biologist with a distracting geology hobby.
The other example is equally weak. Luis Alvarez was a physicist (not an astronomer), but in any case proposed the asteroid extinction theory with his son, who was a geologist.
Worth noting as well that for both these examples other scientists were developing the same theory independently at the same time (Wallace in the case of evolution, Smit in the case of dinosaurs). So even if we are to believe these individuals weren’t experts in the fields where they made significant contributions, there were others who were and were about to publish the same ideas.
I actually agree with the premise of the book (and this thread), but those are poor examples
This reminds me of Steve Job’s proclamation that technology is not enough, technology must be married to the liberal arts. In other words, they should inform each other. I think this is in the spirit of the book the Medici Effect.
This further reminds me of how (in my humble opinion…and I don’t work in education, so take that for what it’s worth) I think we have focused too much on STEM, at least in my field…I work in government. I think we are devalued the liberal arts too much in favor of STEM. I would like STEM-conversant folks, but I want that tempered with people who have thought a lot about the written word, logic, ethics, political science, etc. Anyway, just my personal thought.
I agree completely. I think a big problem is that education has become too reductionist, too focused on careerism, as opposed to developing well-rounded, well-educated, articulate individuals with a broad range of knowledge that they can bring to bear in any specialized field. Because of the lack of a liberal arts education, citizens are easily manipulated by politicians and media to accept and normalize ethereal cultural mores and worldviews within the dominant zeitgeist regardless of their lack of merit.
