The nap and the nightmare

Do you know which Japanese company has the highest market capitalization? It’s Toyota. In 2019, the president of Toyota sent shockwaves through the country by stating that maintaining Japan’s traditional “lifetime employment” system is becoming increasingly difficult. If the most powerful company in Japan can’t do it, what hope is there for the rest of us in the small-to-medium enterprises that make up 99.7% of the economy?

With AI predicted to snatch away our jobs, we are entering an era of brutal competition. This worry keeps me up at night—so much so that I’ve decided to stop taking naps during work hours (well, I’m thinking about it).

The 10,000-hour death sentence

How do we survive? The experts say we now need not just one, but two specialized skills to stay relevant. This sounds like a death sentence to a generalist like me. Have you heard of Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000-Hour Rule”? It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a true master. If I need two skills, that’s 20,000 hours.

By the time I finish practicing, I’ll be long retired—or replaced by a toaster with an AI chip. In fact, by then, I might have already “graduated” from life itself, and my worries would be over. That would be one way to solve the problem, I suppose.

I often think of the Koala. They are the ultimate specialists, feeding exclusively on eucalyptus leaves. It’s a brilliant niche, but a dangerous one. If the eucalyptus disappears, so does the Koala. Are we generalists just Koalas without a forest?

The triumph of range

Just as I was sinking into professional despair, I found a lifeline: David Epstein’s book, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. His argument is a warm hug for every “Jack of all trades.” In an increasingly complex world, we don’t just need people looking through microscopes; we need people who can “zoom out.” The more complex a problem is, the more we need generalists who can connect the dots. Robots are great at the microscope; they aren’t so great at the big picture.

The wisdom of the “reshuffled” craftsman

We see this play out on the factory floor at CondeHouse. Traditionally, furniture making was a world of hyper-specialists: one person spent their life milling, another assembling. Reshuffling was rare.

However, we recently started moving people between departments. Originally, this was to make the team more flexible, but the results were fascinating. I was deeply moved when a veteran craftsman said to me: “After being assigned to the new division, I realized that the process I had believed was ‘perfect’ for the last ten years was actually making things harder for the team downstream.”

By becoming a “temporary generalist,” he gained a “Range.” He learned that true mastery isn’t just about doing your job—it’s about understanding how your job fits into the whole.

The master of none?

There is a famous saying: “A Jack of all trades is a master of none.” Usually, it’s an insult. But few people know the full, original version:

“A Jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”

So, to all my fellow generalists: don’t panic. While the specialists are busy eating their eucalyptus leaves, we are the ones making sure the forest doesn’t burn down. Seeing the bigger picture might be the most “robotic-proof” skill of all.

---

True mastery is a symphony of many different skills. Why not bring home a design that reflects that same balance of “Range” and harmony—a piece built by specialists who have learned to see the bigger picture?

---

---