BECOMING AN EXPERT GENERALIST: FIVE KEY PRINCIPLES
So far we’ve talked a lot about why specialization is often a snare and what to do about it, and hopefully you’re starting to see some of the advantages of becoming a generalist, such as being successful without hating every step along the way or having any special inheritance, genetic or otherwise.
Often people pick up a self-help book looking for tactics or strategies (Just tell me what to do so I can get on my way—I’ve got a meeting to attend), but to me that is totally the wrong way to go about it. What people need first is a foundational understanding of a general concept, before getting into any of the finer details.
For example, when it comes to weight loss, one of the principles is caloric control. Often people are concerned with specific diet plans, though, and since they don’t understand that any diet can work so long as it reduces calories, they wind up hopping from one diet plan to the next, never knowing why all of them fail. But the reason plans fail (or work initially and then stop working) is that the dieter hasn’t understood the theory of thermodynamics or how metabolism works. Once you understand those theories, you can then figure out the most appropriate diet plan by determining which one is going to most effectively get your calories to where they need to be while taking metabolic adaptations into account. Fasting—not eating for a while—is one good example; it’s a topic I’ve written a lot about. Some people think it’s the greatest thing on earth, which sometimes confuses me. Indeed, fasting works for a lot of people, but it’s important to know that it works because it takes large swaths of calories out of a person’s diet. Sometimes fasting doesn’t work, though, because it makes people so hungry that they wind up binging on foods they otherwise would have declined, and then they’ll come to me and say, “Hey, so I tried your stupid fasting plan and it caused me to gain ten pounds, so what gives? WTF?” Which is when I’ll tell them—as delicately as I can—that they should have taken the time to read the principles section before they got started with the plan; that way they would have known to modify the fasting schedule so they wouldn’t get to such a point of overwhelming hunger.
This is true for generalism. Because as we continue throughout this book, we’re going to present a framework that shows how you can go about developing skills. Before we do so, however, you need to understand the principles of what we’re talking about, the principles behind getting better at getting better at things.
These principles are as follows:
1. Skill Stacking > Specialization
2. Short-Term Specialization
3. The Rule of 80 Percent
4. Integration > Isolation
5. Repetition and Resistance
Let me give you a brief explanation of each principle, and then we’ll see how they would apply toward getting better at something probably all of us are interested in: fitness.
Skill Stacking > Specialization
Simply put, it’s better to be better (than most people, at most things) than to be the best at any one thing. Skills in combination are more powerful than individual skills by themselves, even if they aren’t as fully developed. This is the fundamental advantage of being a generalist. But it’s not enough to acquire skills. You must also learn to combine them. For reference, I’m using the “greater than” (>) sign to mean “better than.”
Short-Term Specialization
Being a generalist doesn’t mean you try to improve at everything at once. Good generalists are really just short-term specialists in the sense that they focus on one or two things at a time, and once those things are developed up to 80 percent (but never beyond—see the next principle), they then turn their attention to something else.
The Rule of 80 Percent
The Rule of 80 Percent says that if 100 percent is best in the world, then never go beyond 80 percent at anything, because that’s specialization territory. Eighty percent, believe me, is still masterful, so you can safely assume that if you’re 80 percent good at something and still not getting ahead in life, then that something is not your problem. It’s time to acquire another skill.
Integration > Isolation
This principle states that you should practice only the things you need to get good at, as they pertain to the task at hand. This may seem obvious, but often people focus too much attention on techniques or skills that make no sense for what they want to achieve. For example, there’s no point in a guitarist who wants to play AC/DC songs learning a B♭13 chord since AC/DC never uses B♭13 chords.
This principle also states that as far as possible, any technique should be practiced in the context of whatever outcome you’re hoping to get. Again thinking of the guitarist who wants to play AC/DC songs, that guitarist should learn just the chords needed to play those songs and preferably in the context of the song itself. Specific practice produces specific results, so practice only the things you need and nothing more.
Repetition and Resistance
Finally, if you want to get better at something, you need to not only practice that something but also find ways to make it harder on yourself. It’s not enough to simply do something; you also need to make that something difficult for yourself.
FITNESS AS A METAPHOR
I think one of the best ways to explain these five principles would be through the example of fitness, and even though not many people think of fitness as a skill, they most definitely should, because what is a skill if not the ability to complete a task, and what is fitness if not exactly that? It seems to me that being able to do a pull-up is hardly different in theory from being able to play a guitar solo, since both activities require the use of Repetition and Resistance. The only actual difference is the kind of skill a person is performing; neither activity is any less of a skill.
Part of the reason a lot of people never reach their fitness goals is that they don’t think of fitness as a skill; they think of fitness as a habit. And while building a habit is important for building a skill, it’s not enough to just get into the routine of doing something without also finding a way to progress within that routine. Putting yourself in a routine will make you only marginally better at that skill; it will make you better than the people who don’t do that something at all, but it will hardly make you great at it. For that, you need these other principles.
So how about I talk you through this from the standpoint of a gym instructor, because wouldn’t that be fun? We’ll imagine I’m addressing a bunch of mealymouthed middle schoolers who are timid about exercise—essentially my former self. I want to do this because I feel like when I was in school, I got the worst impression about fitness imaginable since I was always forced to do it without understanding why, and then I’d get embarrassed because of how terrible I was. I’m sure some of you can relate.
Now, let me grab my whistle and put my gym shorts on. Ready?
All right, children, gather ’round. Today is your first day of gym class, so there are a few things we need to get across before we subject your tiny bodies to the rigors that await. First, it’s important to understand that fitness is no different than music or math in the sense that all we’re doing is learning a skill. But instead of keeping time or adding integers, we’re practicing physical things like pushups and pull-ups. And while some people may be more inclined to be musicians or mathematicians, others may be more inclined to do pull-ups. That doesn’t mean, however, that people who aren’t inclined to do pull-ups can never be good at pull-ups. (By “inclined,” I mean just naturally good at something.)
Fitness, for example, is considered a skill because you get better at what you practice. This is known as “specific adaptations to imposed demands,” and it applies to literally everything you can think of. You don’t get better at softball without practicing hitting or pitching. You don’t get better at making burritos without folding tortillas. You don’t get better at the guitar without playing guitar, and you don’t get better at push-ups without doing push-ups. Fitness is really a collection of skills, now, isn’t it? Or at least we think it should be. Are people really “fit” if they can do a thousand sit-ups but can’t run a mile or climb a rope or do a push-up? It doesn’t seem to me like they’re fit at all; they’ve just got one ability. That seems like a specialist, or somebody who’s good at one thing but bad at everything else. This class isn’t about building specialists; it’s about building generalists. Our goal is to create what’s called “general physical preparedness.”
Children, I want you to be capable of, and ready for, almost everything. I want you to be able to climb a rope and run a mile and lift heavy things. I don’t want you to worry about being the best at any one of these gym class activities. We’ll leave that for the specialists. Our goal is to get as fit as we can across a very broad array of activities. GPP > SPP is our motto: general physical preparedness over specific physical preparedness.
Why? Well, a couple of reasons. First: the competitive advantage. Surely you will not beat specialists at their specialty, but you will beat them at most anything that isn’t. You won’t outlift a powerlifter, but you should outrun them and have more flexibility and speed. You won’t outrun a triathlete, but you should lift heavier weights and have more muscle tone than they do. And so on and so forth. Your generalism will give you more advantages, so if there were ever a fitness Olympics with all kinds of different tasks to complete, you might not take first place in any event, but you might take first place overall. That’s kind of what we’re going for.
But also this: fitness and health are not the same thing, and this is something you really need to understand. As we said, fitness is the ability to complete a task, but health is something like the ideal interplay between the organs and bodily systems. The problem with specializing is that you can actually take fitness to the point where it destroys your health. You can try so hard to be the best at some physical thing that you blow out your back in the process or cause your kidneys to fail. These things do happen, and detriments to health are all too common a price to pay for wanting to be the best in the world at something involving fitness. Just think of most football players or powerlifters or gymnasts. Nobody would deny that a person must be very fit to achieve greatness in any of those sports, but I also doubt anyone would deny that they take a heavy toll. The football player winds up concussed, and the powerlifter winds up in need of new vertebrae, and the gymnast winds up with seriously deformed elbows. This is the price of specialization. There is no escaping it.
But the generalist doesn’t have to suffer any such ills since they don’t care about being the best at anything. The generalist—and that’s you, children—doesn’t have to put fitness and health at odds, and in fact does exactly the opposite. Whatever we do to increase our fitness should at least not cause harm to our health and should preferably improve it. This means that if we are getting fit in one sense, we’d like to see an increase of health in a similar sense. Fitness is a foundation of health, and health is a foundation of fitness.
GENERAL PHYSICAL PREPAREDNESS: ONE-PAGE EXERCISE PROGRAM
Here is a sample plan that you can use to get started on your general fitness. (See the end of the plan for more information and a link to find out more.)
General
Walk 20–60 minutes per day. Use the following morning-recharge/mobility routine: 2 minutes of jumping rope; 5 minutes of Turkish get-ups; 2 minutes of Hindu push-ups.
DAY 1: |
Push, Hinge—5 sets of 3 @ 5 RM. |
DAY 2: |
Squat, Pull—3 sets of 8 @ 12 RM. Carry: 3 sets × 1 minute. |
DAY 3: |
Interval running. 10-second sprint; 30-second jog; 1-minute brisk walk. Repeat for 15–20 minutes. |
DAY 4: |
Push, Hinge—3 sets of 8 @ 12 RM. |
DAY 5: |
Pull, Squat—5 sets of 3 @ 5 RM. Carry: 3 sets × 1 minute. |
DAY 6: |
Push, Pull, Hinge, Squat—3 sets x 5 reps @ 7 RM. |
DAY 7: |
Walking and mobility only. |
Exercise Options
Visit my website at www.chroniclesofstrength.com to find tutorials for all these exercises.
PUSH: |
Military press, bench, dip, push-up. |
PULL: |
Pull-up, chin-up, bent-over row. |
HINGE: |
Deadlift, single deadlift, hip thrust, kettlebell swing. |
SQUAT: |
Front squat, back squat, goblet squat, split squat. |
CARRY: |
Farmer walk, overhead walk, rack walk. |
Notes
@ RM means “at rep max,” so 7 RM means to use a weight you could lift for no more than 7 reps on that particular exercise. Intensity is paramount—be sure you’re going heavy enough.
Recommended Additional Reading and Resources
Intervention (Dan John); Paleo Workouts for Dummies (Kellyann Petrucci, Pat Flynn); “101 Kettlebell Workouts” (Pat Flynn), free at 101kettlebellworkouts.com. My YouTube channel for tutorials on the exercises: www.youtube.com/user/supmuhhumbruh.
To be a generalist in fitness is to be fit at many things, not just one. So we can say people are “fitness generalists” to the extent they can do many tasks well even if they can’t do any one task best. Everyone got that? Please put that down in your notes. This is the first principle, you see. GPP > SPP (Skill Stacking > Specialization).
Listen up because this next part is important. Since I just made the case for why we’re going to focus on being generalists and not specialists, now I have to tell you how we’re going to go about it. And this part is going to sound a little ironic at first, but I promise it’ll make sense once we get into a couple of examples. The reason it’s going to sound ironic is this: a generalist is really just a short-term specialist. I understand that I just spent the past fifteen minutes arguing against specialization, but what I was really arguing against was not the use of specialization but being a specialist, and there is a great deal of difference between the two. The use of specialization is just focusing on something to get better at it, whereas being a specialist is a commitment to becoming the best at something because you think that’s where you’re going to find success or happiness. A specialist is someone who uses long-term specialization, then. But a generalist is someone who uses Short-Term Specialization. Here, sit up straight, and let me explain.
The generalist—and this doesn’t matter whether it’s in fitness or anything else—doesn’t get good at (almost) everything by trying to do everything at once. That would be a fool’s assumption. Such an approach would only dilute effectiveness and cause a person to go mostly nowhere. Instead, generalists must learn to surge and maintain. They must learn to push in one area while not letting everything else fall completely to shreds. This is your second principle: a good generalist is just a short-term specialist. Mark it down.
For example, if you want to get better at lifting weights, then you should spend a period doing precisely that, and we should make weightlifting the initial focus of our program. That doesn’t mean we can’t still run or stretch or practice handstands; it only means we’ve established a priority. It means that if we are ever caught in a situation where we only have fifteen minutes to work out, we should spend most of that fifteen minutes squatting or deadlifting or whatever. Every skill is obtained by practicing that skill specifically, so we use Short-Term Specialization to bring up whatever skill set we need as efficiently as possible, and once we’ve achieved a sufficiency at that skill, we can then toss it in maintenance mode and put our attention on a new skill. So maybe we go from lifting weights four times a week to lifting weights two times a week and focus more on running or gymnastics or what have you. These are just examples to get the principle across—don’t worry about the details yet. Simply know for now that we must devote a lot of attention and energy to whatever we want to get better at, but at the same time, we should allocate enough attention and energy to prevent everything else from deteriorating.
The principle of Short-Term Specialization also relies on the fact that no skill is quite as difficult to preserve as it is to learn in the first place. Here’s what I mean. It takes a lot more effort to get your deadlift to double your body weight than it does to keep it there. It also takes a lot more effort to learn a handstand than it does to maintain a handstand. Some skills are surely more slippery than others in the sense that they fall off sooner than you’d like, but no skill takes quite so much effort to maintain as it does to gain. Think, for example, of riding a bike: it takes a while to learn but hardly any effort to remain fairly decent at it. This is why we put more attention and energy into building a skill than into holding on to it—that’s how this whole thing works. But at the same time, we can’t expect a skill to maintain itself; we still need to allot some amount of practice time to it even if that amount of time isn’t as much as it was before.
If we’re looking at our curriculum, then, maybe we’ll spend a unit on strength and a unit on conditioning and a unit on flexibility and a unit on something else, and while each of those units will have a clear “specialization,” we’ll still keep up with everything we’ve practiced so far. We’ll still lift in the conditioning unit, and we’ll still stretch in the strength unit, even if that isn’t where we spend most of our time. Our greatest focus will be on whatever the theme of the unit is. Does that make sense? And have you put it in your notes? Because this is a very important principle. You cannot be a good generalist without knowing what Short-Term Specialization is and how to rotate periods of emphasis on each particular skill set.
Essentially, what I’m saying is that if you took a snapshot of a generalist’s training program, you might assume that person is a specialist, but then when you zoom out and look at how the plan switches emphasis over time, you’ll start to see what we’re really after: becoming capable of, and ready for, almost everything.
This brings us to our next principle, the Rule of 80 Percent, which states that if 100 percent is “best in the world” at something, then we should never go beyond 80 percent “good” at anything. This might sound even more peculiar than the last principle, but again, it will make a lot of sense if you can just sit still and let me explain it to you. I appreciate your patience, I really do. You’re such good children. And handsome!
Imagine our goal is to become better than most people at most things (which, as generalists, it is). Then when, I must ask, do you think we will ever need to be more than 80 percent good at something? The answer is never—you will never need to be more than 80 percent good at one skill unless your goal is to become a specialist, which would obviously defeat the entire purpose of this conversation. So that’s reason number one. Reason number two is that 80 percent good at something is already so far beyond masterful that it’s hard to imagine any situation where getting better at that something will contribute significantly to any goal that isn’t lifelong specialization. For example, say you want to be generally physically fit and you can benchpress close to five hundred pounds, which is in at least the eightieth percentile of powerlifting, but you’re fifty pounds overweight. Adding more weight to your bench press is not going to help you achieve the goal of becoming more generally fit. At this point, I think nutrition is your problem. I think it’s time to learn another skill.
The Rule of 80 Percent is really set up as a sort of shockproof BS detector in the sense that it’s supposed to help us figure out what our problem isn’t. Because the closer you get to that 80 percent mark, the more you can be sure that particular skill isn’t your problem. Another example is if you can run fifty miles but can’t lift your own body weight up to a pull-up bar. At this point, it doesn’t seem like cardio is your problem—lack of strength is your problem.
Finally, I want you to know that 80 percent is the cutoff, not the goal, since most of us will never need to get anywhere near that proficient at something to get what we need out of it. Most people don’t need to get to 80 percent of the world’s heaviest deadlift to achieve what they need out of deadlifting; they probably need to get to only 20 to 40 percent. All the Rule of 80 Percent states is that we should never go beyond 80 percent good at something, because as soon as we do, we’re no longer generalists.
Did everybody get that? Great! Because now we can talk about our next principle, which is Integration > Isolation. This is perhaps the most complicated principle but also the one most worth understanding, because so many people get so confused about skill development, when it really doesn’t need to be complicated at all.
All Integration > Isolation says is that you should practice whatever skills you want to improve in the context of whatever goal you want to achieve. Take an exercise like the pull-up, for example. This is a skill that can be used to achieve a variety of goals. You can use the pull-up to build strength, muscle, or endurance. But how you practice that technique will determine the effect. For example, if I want to use pull-ups to develop strength, then I should keep my reps low and the weight high by adding a belt with some plates attached. If I want to use pull-ups to build muscle, then I should do a few more reps with a little less weight. Finally, if I want to use pull-ups to increase endurance, I should do as many reps as I can. Now, I get that some of you think this example is absurd because you can’t imagine even doing one pull-up at this point. But let’s imagine pull-ups aren’t some insanely difficult thing, which they shouldn’t be, and won’t be, once I’m through with you.
The point of Integration > Isolation is that to the extent that it is practical, we should practice every skill and technique within the context of generating an outcome. If we’re on a strength program, then we should practice only the exercises we need to build the most amount of strength, and we should practice those exercises according to the sets and reps that will make us strong. There is no use in learning exercises at this point that don’t directly attribute to our goal, even if those exercises seem interesting. For example, in this case, there’s no reason we should be spending time learning how to breaststroke. The breaststroke is a fine exercise and useful for endurance (because swimming is useful for endurance), but we shouldn’t spend most of our time during a strength phase in a swimming pool, geriatric workouts excluded. This would be like learning to draw cartoons when you want to create realistic oil paintings of landscapes.
Integration > Isolation forces us to start with the end in mind and devise a plan based on what we want to achieve. Mostly it helps us focus specifically on the skills we need to practice to produce a particular outcome. For example, if we want to get better at running, then we should put together a plan that teaches stride mechanics and features protocols to increase aerobic capacity, and preferably we should be able to practice stride mechanics within the context of those aerobic protocols. In other words, we practice the technique of running within the running program itself. What I’m talking about is being as efficient as possible and focusing our attention and effort as specifically as possible on exactly the things we need to improve and not wasting any time on extraneous or irrelevant activity. What is extraneous or irrelevant activity? Simply anything that isn’t directly related to the goal. Bench press is extraneous or irrelevant if the goal is to become a better runner, but it’s not extraneous or irrelevant if the goal is to build a bigger chest or upper body strength. This principle requires context, and just about any skill or technique can be validated by it so long as you’re clear on what you want to achieve and what’s needed to achieve it.
A running program probably shouldn’t focus overmuch on bench-pressing, though we should (according to our third principle) bench-press every now and then just to maintain what we’ve already earned. And probably a strength program shouldn’t focus overmuch on running, though we should (again, according to our third principle) run every now and then to maintain that particular skill. Over time, we switch back and forth to further develop each of these areas independently.
This brings us to our final principle: Repetition and Resistance. We can’t expect to get better at something without doing that something and finding ways to make it harder as we go. In other words, if we want to get stronger, we need to do an exercise and then add weight. Keep in mind, adding weight is increasing resistance. It isn’t enough to just do any old exercise however we feel like doing it. We must do the exercise we want to get better at, and we must find a way to challenge ourselves with it. Let’s take the example of push-ups, since I think that’s something everybody should be able to do, and if you can’t, then here’s your opportunity to learn. The first thing you need to understand is that you’re never going to get better at push-ups unless you actually practice them (repetition), and you’re never going to get past a certain point with push-ups unless you find ways to make them challenging (resistance). Maybe that means doing more push-ups in a set (density) or more push-ups throughout the day (volume) or adding weight to (or changing the angle of) your push-ups (intensity) or just doing them more often (frequency). All these variables are ways of increasing resistance, and all of them work, though some may work better for certain exercises than others. But also remember that how we challenge ourselves with push-ups should depend on the principle that we covered before this one (Integration > Isolation). So, for example, if we want to use push-ups to develop strength, we should focus more on adding intensity (increasing weight or altering the leverage), whereas if we want to use push-ups to develop endurance, we should focus more on adding density (increasing the number we do per set). Again, some context is needed, but for now we aren’t trying to get that specific; I just want you to understand the principles and their universality.
Yes, universality. Because so far I’ve only spoken about how these principles apply to skills found within fitness, but perhaps it would now be appropriate to take off my gym shorts and provide a few analogies of how they might apply to other disciplines. (Except I won’t actually take my shorts off because you either go commando or you don’t, and look, I’ve made my decision. At some point you’re going to have to make yours.)
Let’s imagine we want to get better at writing, and we’re looking at these five principles. First, we need to determine what kind of writing we want to get better at. Do we want to become better humor writers or fantasy novelists or what? Let’s say we want to become better humor writers (Short-Term Specialization); I think that’s a fine place to start and a useful skill, especially if you ever want to start a blog or write a book, since it’s a good thing to be able to make people laugh. Then we’ve got to think about the skills we need to get a chuckle out of someone. The first, it seems, would be the power of observation, since all humor is essentially just telling people the truth in a more efficient way than what they’re used to. For example, I saw a chuckle-worthy definition the other day that read, “Charity, verb: to make an ingrate.” I thought that was pretty good because it’s something to which everybody can relate. You probably remember a time when you opened your house to people and fed them dinner and let them shower, and did they ever say thanks? No, all they did was leave dishes in the sink and hair in the drain. Then obviously you felt like asking them to leave, but you thought about what Jesus said on the mountain about people you can’t stand, though since you aren’t a Bible scholar, you can’t remember what it was, only you’re pretty sure it had something to do with being nice.
So it seems to me that being funny comes down to surprising people with something they already think is the case. At least that’s part of it. So maybe you start developing your humor by paying better attention to what’s going on and taking notes of things that seem ironic. That’s Repetition and Resistance. And say you’re in the fitness field like I am, so maybe you pay particular attention to whatever ironies you see in the gym (Integration > Isolation), which, God knows, offers no small amount of material. Now, I don’t want to get too far into this just yet. I only want to point out how these principles apply no matter what skill you want to get better at. And obviously humor is an example of a skill that can attach to basically anything, so it fits in perfectly with the idea of a skill stack.
Here’s how I’d like to wrap up this section: memorize these five principles and start to think of ways they might apply to something you want to get better at. Or use these five principles to assess why you didn’t improve at something as quickly as you would have liked. That’s what’s helpful about the way we’re doing things: you can apply the principles of generalism to get better quickly, and you can employ them to figure out where or why you’re stuck on something you’ve already started.
In the next couple of sections, I’ll begin to outline what I believe are a series of essential skills, because if we’re going to acquire a stack of skills, we need a foundation on which to construct it. And that foundation should be composed of skills that are useful and awesome for everybody. So go use the bathroom if you need to, but hurry back. The fun is just about to begin.