Approach your own personal voyage and projects like Michelangelo approached a block of marble, willing to learn and adjust as you go, and even to abandon a previous goal and change directions entirely should the need arise. Research on creators in domains from technological innovation to comic books shows that a diverse group of specialists cannot fully replace the contributions of broad individuals. Even when you move from an area of work or an entire domain, that experience is not wasted.

My initial spark of interest in this topic came after reading viral articles and watching conference keynotes that offered early hyper specialization as some sort of life hack, a prescription that will save you the wasted time of diverse experience and experimentation. I hope I have added ideas to that discussion, because research in myriad areas suggests that mental meandering and personal experimentation are sources of power, and head starts are overrated. As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a century ago, of the free exchange of ideas, “It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.”

This quote is from the book, Range - Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein.

There are lots of early specializers in various horsemanship disciplines.  And many of them end up as clinicians and authors later in their careers. I’m not saying we should ignore them, but I am saying that Epstein’s research shows that we can study them and take the principles and ideas that we find most useful and combine them with other ideas from other horsemen and horse women. By experimenting with a broad range of ideas from diverse sources of information, we can progress on the path to better horsemanship in the second half of life.

Here's a link to the book, From Strength to Strength, mentioned in the podcast.

And a link to Descript, the audio and video editing tool I use.

And a link to the Second Half Horsemanship website.