Hey Reader,

For a very long time, I thought I needed to find my thing.
My specialty, my passion, the one thing that would make me feel alive.

I also believed I needed a single word to define myself, something I could say when people asked what I do or who I am. And because I didn’t have that word, I felt like a failure. Everyone else seemed to have theirs. Engineer, football player, journalist. They all looked like they had found the secret to success. I told myself that until I reached that point, I hadn’t really made it.

It took me a while to see that this question, what do you do, doesn’t come from curiosity. It comes from a need to label. To put people in boxes and make them easier to understand.

Recently I started reading a book called Range: Why Generalists Thrive in a Specialized World. It helped me change how I see all this—finding my thing, being good at something, even what it means to succeed.

The book begins with the difference between Tiger Woods and Roger Federer.
Tiger was trained early. His father saw potential in him and pushed golf from the time he could stand. He became the symbol of the “cult of the head start,” this belief that the sooner you start specializing and the more you practice, the better you get.

Federer, on the other hand, spent his childhood trying everything that involved a ball and a net. He played tennis only later, when he realized he enjoyed it most.

The author explains that Tiger’s story works in what he calls kind learning environments. These are predictable spaces where patterns repeat and feedback is quick and accurate. Golf, chess, billiards, firefighting, poker. In those worlds, repetition helps.

But life, he says, is mostly the opposite.
It’s a wicked environment—a place where rules are unclear, patterns don’t repeat, and feedback often arrives too late or points in the wrong direction.

That’s where this idea of “Martian tennis” comes in.​
Most of life isn’t golf. It’s not even tennis. It’s tennis played on Mars. You arrive on a court, you see people with rackets, but you have no idea what the rules are. They might change halfway through the match. You learn as you go.

That image stayed with me.

It reminded me of my cousin and her daughter. For years, my cousin pushed her to play the violin, believing that if she started early, she’d have an advantage. But her daughter never enjoyed it. I remember her saying she didn’t want to go, that it felt like work.

Parents in online forums often agonize over what instrument or activity to choose for their child, afraid they’ll fall behind if they don’t start early. But what this book shows is that a sampling period is much more valuable. Let the child try a few things. Let her discover what she loves before committing. Because when it’s her choice, she’ll stay with it.

Reading this was freeing for me.​
I’ve always had wide interests. I’m curious about everything and sometimes feel scattered because of it. But our greatest strength as humans is not narrow focus, it’s the ability to integrate broadly.

That idea lifted a weight off my shoulders.

We’ve been telling ourselves the wrong story.
The world isn’t kind or predictable. It doesn’t reward repetition the way golf does. If that were true, every old person would be wise, and every young person naive. But we know it doesn’t work that way.

What matters is how we live, how we learn, how we keep paying attention.

So if you haven’t found your purpose yet, don’t rush.​
You don’t need to fit in a box. You don’t need to define yourself forever.

It’s okay to explore, to keep sampling, to change direction when something no longer feels right. Maybe you’ll find something that lasts a lifetime, or maybe it will only matter for a while. Either way, that’s enough.

Life is Martian tennis.
The rules change, and you learn as you play.

P.S. These letters aren’t a broadcast, they’re a conversation. If something speaks to you, or even stirs you the wrong way, just hit reply. I read every message.

See more of my work at rooteddad.com​

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