Check out the book “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World” by David Epstein for why generalists actually have better outcomes than specialists,

Check out the book “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World” by David Epstein for why generalists actually have better outcomes than specialists, even at specialized tasks. Intuitively, I think this makes sense. Imagine skill as a logarithmic function with the x axis being time. Every unit of work you put in to train starts becoming less and less efficient. By training in different skills you are making more efficient use of your training time. And even if the skills appear to be orthogonal to see each, there’s definitely a cross training effect, for both mental and physical tasks. A good example is programming. For longer than I care to admit I was one of those guys who could code but wasn’t that strong in math. I was frustrated because it felt like I wasn’t getting better. I decided to strongly focus on math, started exercising, and did brain training with dual n-back tests to increase my fluid intelligence. I was pleasantly surprised that all these unrelated activities boosted my programming ability to a significant degree, in a comparatively marginal amount of time.