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High Achiever or Wide Achiever? - Roman Krznaric

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We should all be worried about the £20 note, which features the eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith staring fixedly at workers toiling in a pin factory. Smith argued that this factory would produce far more pins if workers specialised in just one or two tasks – such as straightening the wire or sticking on the head – rather than doing all the stages of pin-making themselves. The result was his most famous invention: the division of labour. But this idea is one our most disastrous inheritances from the Industrial Revolution. It has led to the belief that becoming an expert in a narrow field is both what we should expect from our jobs, and what we should aspire to. So we rarely have the privilege of doing a whole task from beginning to end like a craftsperson. Is being a specialist the best way to use our talents? The world certainly needs heart surgeons, and we can gain personal satisfaction and social status from exercising our expertise. Yet the cost of being a specialist or a hig

We should all be worried about the £20 note, which features the eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith staring fixedly at workers toiling in a pin factory. Smith argued that this factory would produce far more pins if workers specialised in just one or two tasks – such as straightening the wire or sticking on the head – rather than doing all the stages of pin-making themselves. The result was his most famous invention: the division of labour. But this idea is one our most disastrous inheritances from the Industrial Revolution. It has led to the belief that becoming an expert in a narrow field

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