What Tiger Woods and Jazz Will Teach You About Your Career

A book by David Epstein may provide the most powerful advice for your career.

“Mental meandering and personal experimentation are sources of power, and head starts are overrated”- David Epstein

At the age of two, Tiger Woods first appeared on The Mike Douglas Show accompanied by his father, Earl Woods, to demonstrate his golf skills and putt against comedian Bob Hope. Earl, a former special forces Green Beret, had already begun training his son to become the greatest golfer in the world. As a result, Tiger could use a golf club before he could even speak. Under Earl’s military-style instruction, Tiger soon became a child prodigy in the world of golf. At the age of 21, Tiger became the youngest winner of The Masters — his first of fifteen (to-date) Major Championships. Soon after, Tiger became the number one golfer in the world. The world clamored to identify what made Tiger so special and how they could replicate his success. Earl would later publish a book entitled Training a Tiger: A Father’s Guide to Raising a Winner in Both Golf and Life, which provided a handbook for parents on how to craft specialized skills early in the lives of their children. It’s hard to argue with Tiger’s iconic success, but does his path to greatness represent a realistic process that we should all strive to emulate in our careers?

Most of Us Aren’t Tiger and Life Isn’t Golf

“In a wicked world, relying upon experience from a single domain is not only limiting, it can be disastrous.” — David Epstein

Golf is a wonderful sport. It can be immensely rewarding for those that dedicate themselves to it, while humbling the casual player, such as myself. David Epstein, in his book Range, classifies golf as a “kind learning environment,” meaning that feedback on performance is immediate and progress is typically evident. Other fields can also be classified as kind, such as chess, music, or games. Life, however, is generally not such an environment. Often, we are subjected to “wicked learning environments,” defined by Epstein as those where “the rules of the game are unclear or incomplete, there may or may not be repetitive patterns, and they may not be obvious, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both.” In these types of environments, experience may reinforce the wrong behaviors. We’ve likely all met the manager who is intelligent but lacks social grace, simply because their experience has taught them to be pointed and abrasive, without regard to human emotion or motivation.

If we approach life and our careers in the same way that Tiger approached his, will we be successful? The evidence seems to state the contrary. In many cases, highly specialized experts become so narrowly focused that they become worse with experience. The world around us is mostly wicked in terms of learning and with humans relying mostly on experience to make decisions, specialization can backfire. While the stories of Tiger swinging a golf club as a toddler are romanticized as a case of extreme specialization resulting in other-worldly skill, remember that most of us aren’t Tiger, nor are we playing golf as a career.

Focus on Creating Jazz, Not Classical

Jazz is music driven by improvision. Unlike classical music, which is evaluated on its adherence to the score in which it was written, jazz varies by artist, the environment in which its being played, and even the artist’s mood. No two jazz performances of the same song are the same. While many artists can be credited with contributing to the creation of jazz, Django Reinhardt’s story may be the most intriguing. Injured in a fire, he was able to play guitar with only three fingers on his playing hand. Despite the injury, Reinhardt’s creativity exploded. Never a student of the classical music prevalent at the time, coupled with his unique playing style caused by his injury, his improvision led to the creation of Gypsy Jazz.

The creation of jazz required the ignoring of all rules set forth by classical music at the time. In fact, most of the artists credited with creating jazz had no background in formal musical training. They simply played their instruments for sound to achieve a result that no one had ever heard before. Classical artists typically struggled to recreate jazz because the structure of formal music training restricted their creativity and ability to improvise. In other words, educated classical artists were skilled but less creative than those unrestricted by the walls of specialization. This is certainly not an indictment of classical music nor formalized training, but instead, an example of how innovative problem solving can be achieved when traditional ways of thinking are lifted, and an outsider’s perspective is left to improvise.

The Takeaway for Early Careerists

In my conversations with those new to their careers, I often field questions about finding passion and purpose as quickly as possible. It’s a reasonable question. We all want passion and purpose and the modern world that is obsessed with Tiger-esque stories have taught us to try to find them as soon as possible. The problem with this way of thinking is it is focused on the end goal and not on the process of finding it. Tiger Woods had his purpose decided for him while he was still in the womb. You could make the case for this being a blessing or a curse for Tiger. The rest of us have the privilege of finding it on our own, albeit later in life. The lesson here is you should let go of the pressure of “finding your passion.” Van Gogh, one of the most profound artists to have ever lived, pursued numerous professions and trades before channeling the diversity of his experience into becoming an artist at 33 years old and creating art that has become world-renowned today.

Rather than obsess over the end goal, take joy in the process of learning, experimenting, dabbling, exploring, sampling, and even often failing as you try new things. Early on, having a breadth of experience will prove to be more valuable, and more importantly, more enjoyable, than choosing one narrow path.

The Takeaway for Those Further Along

“A paradox of innovation and mastery is that breakthroughs often occur when you start down a road, but wander off for a ways and pretend as if you have just begun.” — Sarah Lewis

You’re an experienced professional that has chosen a field, perfected your craft, and now you may be questioning if the path you’ve chosen is the “right” one. It’s easy to pivot to other choices when you’re young, but now you’re devoted, and you’ve channeled so much time and energy towards your niche that it would be wasteful to change your mind now, right?

This way of thinking is characterized by a concept known as the “sunk cost fallacy,” which is the notion that if time has been invested in a particular cause, then a major loss would be incurred if such cause was to be abandoned. The reason this concept is typically a fallacy is that it does not consider the potential upside of a change and instead only factors in the loss. In career terms, the sunk cost fallacy is often realized when professionals choose to stay in a field although it causes them to be deeply miserable out of fear of losing the investment of time, rather than pivot to a new career. Changing your career can be risky, but so too is staying in the same field and being unhappy. The risk of not making a change can also be described as “opportunity cost,” in that you may be missing the chance to excel in another field by staying where you are. We often discount opportunity costs because our fear of failure blinds us from seeing our own potential.

Rather than viewing a career pivot for its potential for loss, consider how your experienced perspective can be applied elsewhere by way of an outsider’s advantage and analogical thinking. Starting fresh does not mean starting over; your career should be considered as a playground for creative thinking and fulfillment, not a linear progression. Rather than comparing yourself to those who specialized early, embrace the power of personal experimentation. You will be rewarded with your ability to create jazz in a world dominated by classical.

Author’s Note:

This article encapsulates some of the key ideas that I took away from David Epstein’s book, Range. However, there’s many ideas and concepts from the book I did not cover, therefore, I highly recommend reading the entire book.

Sources:

Epstein, D. (2020). Range. Pan Macmillan.