In Praise of Range by David Epstein (and why it’s different to my book)

February 9, 2026 //
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In April 2020 I published my first book. It’s called ‘You Don’t Know Jack! Why the Jack of All Trades Triumphs in the Modern World.’ It was a long time in gestation, roughly 2015 to 2018, a long time in a fruitless search for an agent and a publisher, roughly 2018 to 2019, and a long time in design, layout and self-publishing (even with the help of a gifted and endlessly patient designer and an indulgent and thoughtful friend-reviewer).

Throughout this period, I regularly researched the web for other books in the same vein. There were precious few, if any. I was convinced I was onto something new and different, and therefore important. I was wrong. Maybe the candidate agents and publishers were right to turn it down. A half-full guy would call sales of the book modest. But, I reasoned, the book had merit, would help people and was finally out there.

In August 2025, while I was thinking about a companion booklet to my original ‘JOAT’ effort, I was scanning my daily Amazon email of 99p ebook deals. Lo and Behold, there was a book by a David Epstein in a striking snot-green, entitled ‘Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World’.

My first thought was, ‘Bugger me, that’s almost word-for-word my title and story, I’ve been ripped off!’. My second thought was to buy the book and check when it was written. It was published in 2019. Even the 2020 afterword was probably published before You Don’t Know Jack! hit the virtual shelves. How could I have missed a highly pertinent number-1 US bestseller hiding from me in plain sight?

Having read this excellent piece of work from end to end, I can say that it’s incredibly authoritative, insightful and worthwhile. Is it better than mine? Yes, I think so. Does it replace the need to read mine? No, I don’t think so. The main difference between the two books is the research base. When I think about people in any walk of life, around 1% are the leaders in their field, while the rest of us are in the 99%.

Range – like almost all books in the genre – focuses on the 1%; how people became the best at something by exposing themselves to a variety of experiences rather than a deep focus on that one thing. All the examples are of people who got to the top of the tree.

You Don’t Know Jack! is fundamentally different in that the research base is me – an ordinary nobody – and the audience is the 99% of us that will never make it to the top rung on the ladder, nor do we necessarily aspire to that. Happiness and a joy in our unique journey is what drives us, not the destination of peerless achievement or primacy.

This in no way negates the tenets of Range. Far from it, in fact.  Every JOAT should embrace them and their inherent variety. Each of them has valuable lessons in how we can become better versions of ourselves, over time. Interestingly, because it is peppered with examples of world-beaters and Nobel prize-winners who luxuriated under a patchwork quilt of a background, Range doesn’t really talk about the regular Joe – or should I say Jack – until the last concluding chapter. Even then, it’s advice for what we should do – or our little Jimmy or Jenny should do – to be the best of the best. So, if you aspire to be in the 1%, read Range. If you don’t, read You Don’t Know Jack!. As a footnote, Range is so thoroughly researched that I learned new stuff about the JOAT from Epstein’s afterword that I should already have known, especially after half a century specialising in generalising. I highly recommend Range. It’s a great and enjoyable book.

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A companion booklet to You Don’t Know Jack!

February 9, 2026 //
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Over five years after I published ‘You Don’t Know Jack! Why the ‘Jack of All Trades’ Triumphs in the Modern World‘, I published something called ‘Fifty Snap Guides‘.

For any Jack or Jackie, they’re my take on fifty different topics that you might want to add to your basket of skills. I had originally intended for them to be in the original book, but the book got too big so I parked them for a long while.

Well, they’re out now, in a tidy little publication that you can read in about the time it takes for your bolognese to simmer properly. Very affordable too.

You can buy one here, and then maybe pass it on to a reading buddy and fellow Jack of All Trades.

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To Mask or Not to Mask

April 20, 2021 //
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To mask or not to mask, that is the question. Even after you’re vaccinated.

The swiss cheese model explains how the vaccine is one of several layers we can use against infection, and let’s not forget that many of us are not vaccinated. But that’s not really what I’m talking about.

If you wear a mask, chances are it won’t stop you getting infected but it will stop others getting infected by you. Wearing a mask stops you giving it to others, and doesn’t really stop you getting it.

Any marketer worth their salt would wear a mask, because marketers are always thinking about others, putting themselves in other people’s shoes, their customers and the partners.

Put simply, and at the risk of over-generalising: if you wear a mask in public and/or confined spaces, you’re being selfless, and you’re thinking of others. If you don’t, you’re not, and you’re not.

So, you see, it’s not really a question. You should mask.

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Categories Marketing, Self-help

How the Jack of All Trades Should Seize the Day

March 23, 2021 //
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Almost a year ago, in the teeth of lockdown angst, I published a book on what to do if you’re a Jackie or Jack of All Trades and master of none. This page from the book is about seizing the day, seizing the moment, and it seems a valid now as it did when I wrote it. It’s a heavily pictorial, heavily putdownable coffee table book, as you can see. You can buy the book here, and, if you like it, perhaps leave a review of a 5-star-based nature?

“Seize the taco by the lake” by Ioppear is licensed under CC by 2.0

Here’s what the page says:

“We are JOATS. We have a lot of things going on, competing for our attention. Every day that we breathe a myriad of thoughts flash through our heads. Some of them stay a while, some of them we banish. Some of them are pure gold and we want to hold onto them, kick them around and develop them, but then the next thought or an interruption comes along and they’re gone, sometimes forever.

“You must seize the moment. You have these great thoughts milling around and you need to harness them so that you can filter them later and act on the good ones. That germ of a great one-liner. That question you must ask someone. That errand you must get done by Friday. That idea for a great new band, book, business…

“Don’t let these thoughts disappear into the ether!

“If you’re at your computer, keep a window open that you can toggle to, punch in a bullet point, and go back to what you were doing. As I write this book, every single page fires a few synapses that lead to thoughts that don’t belong on there. They do belong somewhere else, maybe in the book, maybe in another area of my life, but they’re important, so I stop momentarily, add them to a list and come back to where I was.

“If you’re out and about, or relaxing in front of something, or going from a to b, you don’t need to worry about a notebook or pen to capture that gem for posterity. Learn how to use the audio memo facility on your phone, or leave yourself a voicemail.”

Thanks for reading!

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales, Self-help

What a Page from my Book on the Jack of All Trades Looks Like

February 25, 2021 //
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I can’t remember if you’ve seen what an actual double page looks like in my coffee table-suited book, published back in April, called You Don’t Know Jack! Why the Jack of All Trades Triumphs in the Modern World. You can buy the book here, and, if you buy it for your coffee table and like it, you could leave a lovely review too, please.

“pregnant woman” by Teza Harinaivo Ramiandrisoa is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Some of the pages are true double pages like this one, devoted to one topic. Some of the pages have an idea on each page, either a version of the Jack of All Trades phrase from another culture, or an autobiographical example of JOATness, or simply an idea. This page is called The JOAT Parent and it goes like this.

“There isn’t much of a job description for being a parent, and there’s not much training either. We pretty much get dropped into one of the most demanding and diverse jobs you can imagine. It’s a full-time job being a dresser, washer, teacher, funder, protector, feeder, carer, advisor.

“Yet, when you think about it, JOATs make great parents. Think of all the different skills we need to acquire. Think of all the different phases a child goes through in its upbringing, the steep learning curves and the hurtling emotions of the rollercoaster. Each phase presents a different set of challenges for them and us and each requires a different mix of those parenting skills than before.

“If you’re a parent and a JOAT, you’re bringing into the world a child that may not end up in the 1%. It may not end up being a specialist. In that case the chances are the child doesn’t know what it wants to do in life, nor may it ever find out during its whole life. Our vital role as a parent is to expose our children to as many different experiences as we possibly can, to see which ones stick. It sounds pretty daunting, but then again, there’s no better role model than us for the multi-faceted life well lived, is there?

“Specialists are so caught up in and committed to being the best that they tend to get other people to bring up their kids for them. They don’t have the time, or they don’t make the time, or they’re not around. Which sounds best for the child to you?”

Thanks for reading!

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales, Self-help

The Jack of All Trades Rides the Hybrid

February 23, 2021 //
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It occurred to me recently that I hadn’t focused on the Jack of All Trades book I published 11 months ago for a good while. It has an indulgent title and subtitle – You Don’t Know Jack! Why the Jack of All Trades Triumphs in the Modern World. You can buy the book from all good booksellers – actually you can’t, you can only buy it from one enormous bookseller, which seems to consume everything in its path, here.

What got me thinking about the book again was that I decided in a rare break in the Irish February weather that I would dust off the bike and give it a spin within 5km of the abode, in keeping with the seemingly eternal restrictions that chisel away at our wellbeing on a daily basis.

I hadn’t been on my bike for years. It’s not a racing bike with narrow tyres. It’s not a push bike with a couple of gears. It’s a hybrid bike, with fat, knobbly tyres that kind of let you go off road and bash it about a bit and kind of are fine for cycling distances on roads.

Of course, it’s the classic JOAT’s – or Jack of All Trades – bike. It does a number of things well but doesn’t focus 100% in one area, like going fast, or carrying things, or being comfortable and relaxing.

So that’s what got me thinking about how I approach pretty much anything, and about the book as well. When we JOATs get stuck into a bunch of things there’s sometimes not room enough for all the ‘trades’ we ply, so it was nice to be reminded by the great outdoors and the ingenious engineering feat that is a geared bike to reconnect with one of my trades again.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales, Self-help

Another Sample Page from my Book on the Jack of All Trades

October 31, 2020 //
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It’s time for another sample page from my book I published in April, called You Don’t Know Jack! Why the Jack of All Trades Triumphs in the Modern World. You can buy the book here, and if you could leave a stellar review too, well, that would be stellar,

The page is entitled ‘There Can Be Only One’ and it goes like this.

There can be only one regional champion, one national champion, one world champion. There can be only one team leader, one head of department, one chief executive. There can only be one political head of a region, one leader of the political party, one leader of the country. There can only be one winner of the prize, whatever that prize is.

Maybe you won prizes at something, and then you went on to the next level. Maybe you won prizes at that level too. At some point you start to analyse how you measured up against the people at the next level. At some point it gets serious. Really serious. At some point you come up against people for whom it’s always been serious. And it’s not fun anymore. You might come second, or worse. For there can be only one.

To take a line from Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata: “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” Vanity and bitterness is for those who are competing with others, for those who are specialists – or believe they are specialists – in whatever they do.

You should be competing with yourself. This is why our teachers, coaches and other bodies encourage us to be the best we can be, to do our best, to better ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with all of us striving to be the best, as long as we understand that it’s our best that counts. This way we avoid unhealthy, unproductive feelings like vanity and bitterness.

Thanks for reading!

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales, Self-help

A Jack of All Trades Who Only Wants One Job

June 7, 2020 //
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I came across this picture recently. I can’t remember where I saw it. It was too late to be included in my book, which is available in all good booksellers – actually just one enormous online bookseller… I think I would have put it in if I’d seen it earlier.

I’m not sure when the picture dates from, perhaps the 1920s, or perhaps the 1930s is more likely. There’s something so sad about the picture, yet it sums up the whole reason for me writing the book in the first place.

I’m not sure it’s genuine; the bottom of the placard looks a bit too straight and clean. If it is genuine, then it’s not a great advertisement. What trade does he know? What job does he want? What does he want us to do?

In the book I talk about how we’re not really a Jack of All Trades, we’re a Jack of Few Trades. Three trades qualifies as a few, and I’m willing to bet in the pictured case they’re closely related.

The funny thing is, in today’s world and today’s economy we would prize this type of person, and they’d probably be doing fine working from home. Yet, back then, in dire economic hardship – the kind of economic hardship we might be looking at now for the next number of years – this basket of physical skills was not enough to land a single job.

There was little opportunity back then to craft your your own value as a specialised generalist. There is now.

If you’d like to know more about how we Jacks of All Trades can triumph in the modern world, you can buy the book here, or from the US and Germany Amazon sites too.

I think this is my first ever Sunday post. Feels good!

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales, Self-help

Free Rein Reigns

May 29, 2020 //
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What’s the story, is it free rein or free reign? Something that has confounded me for a good while.

To me, both spellings and implications make sense. To give someone free rein is to loosen the metaphorical reins to the point where they can do as they please.

To give someone free reign is practically the same thing, though it sounds more regal, more majestic if you like, reflecting the meaning of the word spelled that way.

Apparently the former is the correct spelling and use of the phrase. See here from Merriam-Webster, whose US provenance doesn’t negate the conclusion for UK English I don’t think.

Somewhat tangentially, in fact totally tangentially, here’s a question whose answer you should file away for potential pub quiz benefit. What’s the only word in the English language which ends in mt? Answer – dreamt! Compound verbs featuring dream don’t count :-).

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Categories General, Language

Who Is This Jack of All Trades Book For Anyway?

May 26, 2020 //
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“Concurs 2014, Castellers d’Esplugues” by Castellers d’Esplugues is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Here’s one of the first pages of my You Don’t Know Jack! book, which you can buy here.)

This book is for 99% of us.

This book is for the 99% of us you don’t see on screen, you don’t hear about on the radio, you don’t read about in the papers.

Who are we? We are the Jackies and Jacks of All Trades – the JOATs. We’re pretty good at a bunch of things, but not so good at one of them that you would know of us.

Yes, we work, we play sports, we do a bit of music, we talk politics. But we’re not the 1%.

We are the people who put other people in power. We are the audiences at sports, music and other cultural events. We are the powerhouse of the organisation that gets things done. We are the buyers and consumers of things and ideas. We are the economic provider for the rich and famous.

We are the unsung heroes. We are the people that matter. We are multi-talented, we have options, and we have control. This book helps us understand why this is so and how we can live to our fullest potential.

Are you one of the 99%? If so, I recommend the book. But then I would, I hear you say, I wrote it. You can buy it here, or from the US and Germany Amazon sites too.

 

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales, Self-help
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