Wildest Dreams Come From Range

Lessons From Leaders On Range

“Smart people are a dime a dozen, they don’t usually amount to much, the real key was being creative. And whether it is Leonardo da Vinci or Benjamin Franklin or Steve Jobs, these are people who love to seek patterns across nature. They were interested in everything you could possibly know. By seeing those patterns, they made mental leaps that others didn’t do.” 

Walter Isaacson.

“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

John Lennon.

“Modern work demands knowledge transfer: the ability to apply knowledge to new situations and different domains.”

David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.

“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”

Leonardo da Vinci.

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct.”

Carl Jung.

Range Comes From Curiosity.

As a child I never believed I was amazing at any one thing. For Sunday league kids football I was a goalkeeper, then a defender and occasionally a forward in six a side. I could spend hours building Lego sets, arranging toy soldiers into imaginary battles, or piecing together puzzles of the world map and its flags.

In secondary school, I was popular, but not one of the cool kids. In class I was smart, but I never received the attention or pressure of being the smartest. My academic journey was never a straight line. Final exams had ups, downs, and several resits.

What I was great at was curiosity. Sometimes it got me sent out of class for talking too much or asking the wrong question. I wasn’t the best at any one thing, but I had a quiet superpower: I was fascinated by people.

I spent the summer break of university working for an eccentric American who owned a handful of engineering factories in Birmingham. I loved it. I was good at designing logos, understanding finances and organising machinery layouts. I was great at getting on with people – whether the eccentric American or the factory workers. This was one of my first data points that it was valuable to be good at many things.

I moved into consulting where I would have amazing conversations with business leaders and industry experts. Why was I good at it? I knew how to connect with people, to connect disparate ideas together, and to move fast. Whilst consulting, I discovered the phenomenal book Range by David Epstein. He challenges the myth that specialisation is the only path to success. Instead, he argues that generalists – those who dabble, explore, and connect dots across fields – often thrive in complex and unpredictable environments. 

Generalists – those who dabble, explore, and connect dots across fields – often thrive in complex and unpredictable environments.

It made me look back at my experiences in a different way.

I knew that what I was doing, this ranging, exploratory type of work was beneficial. Why else would we place so much trust in general practitioner doctors – highly trained generalists who help us navigate complexity?

Range helped me to make sense of me loving Lego, blowing things up, history books, geography lectures, ski mountaineering, piano playing, cooking, drawing, being outdoors, being indoors with friends, economics, politics, sociology, psychology, strategy, communication, critical thinking. I’ve always been an easy-going person, willing to share, willing to try something because ‘why not.’

Looking back, I wasn’t born with Range – I built it. As a school kid, my Range looked like curiosity. As a consultant, it became understanding and insight. Today, it’s my ability to hold multiple perspectives, to move from abstract to practical.

I am finding my Wildest Dream in my Range. Yesterday evening Liv and I spent an hour building Lego – a Viking Village to be exact. It was such a throwback to childhood. My Wildest Dream is not to build a Lego Viking village for a living, but maybe it’s to build something new and novel.

Leonardo da Vinci lived through the Renaissance in the 15-16th centuries. In 2013 he shot back into the limelight for posthumously becoming the artist of the most expensive painting ever. $430m for the Salvator Mundi. I urge you to explore his story. Da Vinci wasn’t just an artist; he was a bridge between disciplines, the original interdisciplinary thinker. He was Range. He was the ultimate master of Range. His contributions to scientific discovery, engineering, military equipment, human anatomy and biology are incredible. He had such a diverse range of interests, curiosities and skills. Diversity which only he can make overlap.

Da Vinci wasn’t just an artist; he was a bridge between disciplines, the original interdisciplinary thinker. He was Range.

Never look at your hobbies and think it is getting in the way of something. If you love yoga and baking and piano playing, keep doing it. Maybe you won’t open a yoga retreat or an Etsy baking store or become the next Ludovico Einaudi. But those passions? They shape how you lead meetings, how you connect with people, how you see the world. That’s value. 

I’ve been playing piano again. Not to perform – just to enjoy the process. That small creative act reminds me that our Range, our inspiration, lives in the margins, in how we choose to spend our time when no one’s watching. What hobby, what curiosity, could you return to?

Today I see range in my great friend James, a Gen-Z renaissance thinker. Able to talk, communicate and share stories in sport, philosophy and technology. Excelling in building deeply technical AI models and working with stakeholders in Australia, Dubai and Finland. James has a deep sense of Range. 

He is the Gen Z AI-Renaissance man. What is his Wildest Dream? To contribute to multiple humanity wide challenges. Humanity wide challenges, that is a Wildest Dream. But, multiple, that is only achievable by someone with Range, by someone who has developed their passions across multiple disciplines.

Range is when the 17th century mathematician Gottfried Leibniz was inspired by the 4000-year-old concept of Yin and Yang. 

Leibniz was a true Range master of the 17th century. He moved effortlessly between disciplines. Inspired by ancient philosophy and the concept of Yin and Yang, he made groundbreaking discoveries in mathematics and logic. 

Yin and Yang are foundational concepts in Chinese philosophy, representing complementary opposites – light and dark, active and passive, expansion and contraction. According to mythology, eight elemental symbols were first developed by Fuxi, an ancient cultural hero. He observed the natural world and understood that these dual forces, Yin and Yang, were the building blocks of creation. The eight elemental symbols of Heaven, Lake, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Water, Mountain, and Earth were each made of solid (Yang) and broken (Yin) lines.

Leibniz was a true Range master of the 17th century. He moved effortlessly between disciplines. Inspired by ancient philosophy and the concept of Yin and Yang, he made groundbreaking discoveries in mathematics and logic. One of his most enduring contributions was creating a simple numerical system using just 1s and 0s. One century later, George Boole would be inspired by this binary system to create Boolean Algebra. 

In the 1930s, Claude Shannon took a philosophy and mathematics class at the University of Michigan and learnt about Boolean algebra. As an engineer he applied this idea of binary logic to electric circuit boards. 1s and 0s, Yin and Yang, on and off. Shannon was another Range master, making contributions across mathematics, information theory and cryptography. It might surprise you to learn that Claude.ai is named after Shannon. 

From Fuxi to Leibniz, Boole to Shannon – Range has always driven progress. What began as ancient philosophy became mathematical logic, then evolved into the language of circuits, and now powers the digital age. Range is more than having a hobby. It’s how civilizations leap forward.

In times of uncertainty, Range becomes a competitive advantage.

We are living in challenging times. Challenges are just challenges – they are neutral, they are a construct of our mind. It is up to our interpretation on how we live through them. In times of uncertainty, Range becomes a competitive advantage. Like Da Vinci, we each carry the potential to overlap our own unique mix of skills – to find creativity in the collision points of science and art, philosophy and tech, the ancient and the future.

Each of these humans, Da Vinci, Leibniz, Boole, Shannon, have advanced human civilisation greatly, lived through challenging times and approached it with a sense of exploration. Each of these humans explored beyond their primary discipline, they found range in invention, in philosophy, in art, in engineering. In sketchbooks and circuit boards, in conversations and curiosity. 

The artificial intelligence revolution is just beginning. The 21st century is just beginning. This is the renaissance for us, Millennials, Gen Z, Gen A. This is our time to get involved in transformational challenge. Be a warrior. Get outside. Find challenges and challengers that are worthy of you. Do not hold back, do not be meek. Seek courage to grow, to learn, to develop, to explore, to adventure, to meet people. Read books, talk to people you disagree with. Find your Range.

So, what is your Wildest Dream? What Range will you need to build it?

Deepen Your Curiosity

My favourite learnings on range:

1. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialised World by David Epstein.

2. The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish - Episode 121 with Walter Isaacson: Curiosity Fuels Creativity.

3. The Lost Leonardo - Documentary Trailer.

Seven Lessons On Rituals

Ritus (Latin): custom, usage, ceremony, religious practice.

Spiritus (Latin): breath, soul, life force, inspiration.

Spiritual (modern): A state of meaning, inner harmony, or well-being.

Lessons From Leaders On Rituals

“The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty.”

Atomic Habits by James Clear.

“Small daily improvements, over time, lead to stunning results.”

Robin Sharma.

“Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.”

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

Seven Lessons On Rituals

Doing the thing is so underrated. This morning, I almost didn’t do the thing, which is writing right now. My mind got sucked into preparing for holiday, working on a keynote I have in two weeks, and using time to tie up loose ends. I am writing what could turn out to be my life’s work, or it could not be, it is uncertain, and humans run away from uncertainty.

The greatest achievements in our life are not reached through daily epiphany and daily mountain top climbing. They are achieved with everyday actions. I dream of reaching mountain tops. As I encourage you to as well. The whole purpose of this blog is to get you outside, to get you exploring, to get you dreaming of impacting the world in the way you know that you can.

But, it always comes back to today. To tomorrow. If you go to the gym today, and tomorrow, I can assure you, you will notice no change to your body, perhaps it will even feel worse, it will feel sore, tired and the aches will make you want to pack it in. Today you can take a small step, you can’t finish.

Doing the thing is underrated. Doing the thing every day is what Warriors do.

First, Warriors create their own arena. The place they go to do battle. My thing is writing, and my place for battle is quiet solitude on my balcony, the kitchen table, a quiet place in a hotel resort, undistracted. There is no WiFi in my arena.

Second, Warriors operate on a schedule. Much like the English Premier League, my arena is scheduled far in advance. My time to create is anchored to finishing my daily yoga in the morning at 7.30am. Warriors don’t operate with surprises when things such as waking up are entirely in their control.  

Third, Warriors approach their practice with a serious intention. Many of us feel deeply responsible to the work we do. But we are human. Put some smartness behind your intention. Am I lazy and uncommitted if I check my email whilst I am supposed to be writing? What if I turn off the WiFi before I start? Now the question is irrelevant if I am lazy or not. I can’t check my email now. We must appreciate we are in a world of distraction – turn off the WiFi when you are doing the thing.

Am I lazy and uncommitted if I check my email whilst I am supposed to be writing? What if I turn off the WiFi before I start? Now the question is irrelevant if I am lazy or not. I can’t check my email now.

As the arenas shift in our life, so can our intention. Bruce Springsteen would always blow away his children, until his wife, Patty, said, you are missing the children at their most beautiful. So he decided to fight more in the arena of fatherhood, to be there to cook breakfast, and to allow his writing to be distracted.

Fourth, Warriors don’t fight those people around them when things get tough. They fight their own inner demon telling them to ‘stop, it isn’t worth it, what you are writing will amount to nothing, that future you’re studying for, someone else has already done it, really they have, remember you saw them on Instagram last night?’ Warriors understand that the quickest path to positive self talk is through Self Awareness and Self Management. Recognise that you are talking s*** to yourself. Manage and regulate yourself through practices such as yoga, meditation, breathwork and exercise. Doing the thing after any of these practices is a super smart thing to do.

Fifth, Warriors approach life with humility. Much like John D Rockefeller comments in letter #36 to his son, rich people should give money away quietly. Those of us with the gift of time to focus on doing what we love should do so quietly, without ego, without arrogance. It should be dedicated to the betterment of humanity, not to the elevation of our Instagram feed.  

Sixth, Warriors approach their practice as students. I follow my one hour of writing everyday with one hour of studying. I study where I feel gaps of excitement in my knowledge. In the last month it has taken me down the path of philosophy, Buddhism, Aristotle, Plato, shamanism, the smartness of New Caledonian Crows, hospitality, dopamine, adenosine, cortisol, agricultural revolution, Neanderthals and many more. Leonardo Da Vinci lived through the Renaissance – he is most famous for his painting of Mona Lisa and recently becoming the artist to have sold the most expensive painting ever, Salvator Mundi. Did you know he also made great leaps in military engineering and anatomy? He would sit in the morgue and understand the anatomical structure of corpses so he could better paint his Mona Lisa’s smile. Learning is never in vain, with an open mind it will always connect back to your practice.

Learning is never in vain, with an open mind it will always connect back to your practice.

Seventh, Warriors know that practice hurts. We aren’t fair weather warriors. We do the practice when we feel bored, like shit, like the world hates us, we still sit down for one hour to do the thing. We exercise when we are tired because we know that’s when we grow and become amazing. We judge our effort not our output. Because, hurt is effort. Leonardo Da Vinci posthumously sold his Salvator Mundi painting for $430m. He would have been hurting to create that, painstakingly, with then no output. Who would say he didn’t achieve greatness?

Deepen Your Curiosity

My favourite learnings on rituals:

1.        Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield.

2.        The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

3.        The Wealth Money Can’t Buy by Robin Sharma.

4.        Atomic Habits by James Clear.

5.        Podcast - Bruce Springsteen and Obama on Renegades Born In The USA.