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The Generalized Specialist: How Shakespeare, Da Vinci, and Kepler Excelled

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“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Do you ever ask kids this question? Did adults ask you this when you were a kid? Even if you managed to escape this question until high school, then by the time you got there, you were probably expected to be able to answer this question, if only to be able to choose a college and a major. Maybe you took aptitude tests, along with the standard academic tests, in high school. This is when the pressure to go down a path to a job commences. Increasingly, the education system seems to want to reduce the time it takes for us to become productive members of the work force, so instead of exploring more options, we are encouraged to start narrowing them. Any field you go into, from finance to engineering, requires some degree of specialization. Once you land a job, the process of specialization only amplifies. You become a specialist in certain aspects of the organization you work for. Then something happens. Maybe your specialty is no longer needed o

Thought and Opinion | Reading Time: 10 minutes The Generalized Specialist: How Shakespeare, Da Vinci, and Kepler Excelled “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Do you ever ask kids this question? Did adults ask you this when you were a kid? Even if you managed to escape this question until high school, then by the time you got there, you were probably expected to be able to answer this question, if only to be able to choose a college and a major. Maybe you took aptitude tests, along with the standard academic tests, in high school. This is when the pressure to go down a path to a job comm

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