The Storyteller Approach

These dashboards and reports tell a compelling story based on insights gleaned from your analysis. This may take the form of answering questions posed to you from your clients³, or may be insights you’ve uncovered through your own exploration, modeling, and testing. You can certainly share these results in the form of a memo or a dense written report, but packaging them with effective visualizations and the right annotations and captions allow you to share your insights in a compelling and useful manner.

Humans are natural storytellers, and thinking of your reporting products as “telling a story” is a key part of delivering data analysis that can drive change. Choosing the correct graphics and charts guides the end user towards your conclusions while providing the necessary context. A prime example of this is Florence Nightingale’s mortality graph from over 160 years ago:

The Impresario Approach

A completely different approach is to assemble a report or dashboard that is “shiny”, flashy, and impressive whilst being mostly empty of anything substantive. The goal with this approach is typically to convince stakeholders to maintain an existing budget for an initiative by showing that it’s working, convince them to give a project or program more money, or simply to convince them that you and/or your team are amazing and valuable.

These reports and dashboards are almost always light on substance and big on flashy visuals, colorful graphics, and oversized metrics or numbers devoid of context. Subject matter experts will quickly dismiss these products as being overly simplistic and low-yield, and often they will see through the vapid emptiness to the ulterior motives underlying it.

That doesn’t mean this approach is entirely without merit. Some stakeholders don’t need or don’t want all the details. They want a simple report that they can quickly scan. Many EMS data analysts work in a system where key decisions, particularly funding ones, are made by elected officials and city leaders who are busy and not well-versed in EMS or medical terms or details. Similar situations exist in many corporate settings. Provided you are committed to delivering your simplified report in a way that does not mislead or obscure the underlying truth, this kind of approach can be very effective.

That said, the only way to avoid subject matter experts dismissing you as being simplistic and lacking substance is to provide them with the high-yield report or dashboard that goes along with the dumbed-down version. In many cases, this is also important because those same experts may be asked questions by the higher-level leaders that go into more detail than the simple report initially provided.

A great example of this kind of report is this tongue-in-cheek infographic from the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

The Guide Approach

This last approach really only works for interactive dashboards. In this approach, rather than simply telling stories with the data based on insights you’ve gleaned, you develop a product that enables your end users to do their own exploration in the source data. Your work shifts from giving an answer to guiding them through their own journey. These dashboards are replete with interactive filters, where perhaps clicking on a map region adjusts results across the rest of the dashboard, or selecting an item from a dropdown lets them drill down into a specific unit’s performance.

Developing these dashboards requires a solid understanding of what types of questions your end users may want to ask and how they want certain results calculated. Your work then revolves around implementing useful abstractions around the underlying data to make the datasets and datafields user friendly and building effective UI elements to guide them in their own exploration.

These kinds of dashboards take a lot more work to get right, but become highly useful tools for these leaders to guide their day-to-day operations and big-picture strategy, and go a long way towards enabling your organization to become more data-driven.

In my experience, there are two huge pitfalls to avoid when building a “Guide” dashboard. First, you want to ensure you understand how they will use data results operationally. This is critical to ensuring you are choosing the right data elements and displaying them in the right way. Second, you have to ensure that there is clarity on how key metrics are calculated. If you don’t take the time to achieve this level of understanding, you may end up showing one calculation while end users assume an entirely different calculation. A useful antidote is to include captions or a “definitions” page that clearly states what your calculations mean. Every industry has their own semi-standard metrics and KPIs (with terms like churn, retention, and utilization, but dig a little bit and you’ll find there are often many different ways to calculate something with the same exact title⁴.

Choosing Your Approach

At the end of the day, which approach you take is going to be driven by what your end users want or what you believe they will benefit from.

Want to convince busy senior leaders that a program is working well? Consider the Impresario approach, while being careful to stay true to the underlying data and not mislead. Here, the real work is in simplifying as much as possible while still leaving the core message intact; maximizing the impact of each element in the report and ensuring the design and aesthetics support your end goal.

Want to share actionable insights with stakeholders while providing lots of additional context? You should be telling a story. The real work here is determing how to frame your story, what context matters, and how much detail your audience will want to see (or ought to see).

Want to provide a tool for data discovery, not just a static report? You’re in the guide business. The real work here is spent understanding your clients’ desires for the tool, how they will work with it, and how they will use the results operationally. And then spending the time refining the tool to work effectively for them and providing hands-on training so they can get the most benefit from it.

Finally, each approach works best when you borrow ideas from the other approaches. You should always strive to provide appropriate context and work towards telling a story—whether in a super-simple report or in a dashboard tool. Your reports and dashboards will always be more compelling and have better engagement when they look good, use design elements to achieve clarity, and remove unnecessary elements. And your visuals should always invite your audience to do their own exploration and digging.

The default ggplot histogram is functional but boring. Here’s a histogram showing the number of words in a set of movie reviews¹.

review_stats |> ggplot(aes(review_words)) + geom_histogram()

review_stats |> ggplot(aes(review_words)) + geom_histogram()

Functional? yes. And yet also really pretty ugly.

I decided to do better and assemble a function that extends ggplot with an opinionated, better histogram.

review_stats |> better_hist(aes_x = review_words,
                           label_args = list(title = "Word Counts of Reviews",
                                             subtitle = "Movie Reviews from NLP lab at Cornell",
                                             x = "Word Count",
                                             y = "Number of Reviews"),
                           add_mean = TRUE,
                           add_sd = 2)

review_stats |> better_hist(aes_x = review_words,
                           label_args = list(title = "Word Counts of Reviews",
                                             subtitle = "Movie Reviews from NLP lab at Cornell",
                                             x = "Word Count",
                                             y = "Number of Reviews"),
                           add_mean = TRUE,
                           add_sd = 2)

The full code is in a GitHub gist here.

Functionally, this function starts by calculating binwidth using the Freedman-Diaconis method. It can also (optionally) calculate density. We add labels for minimum, maximum, and mean, then style using the hrbrthemes theme_ipsum_rc. Lines for mean and standard deviations can aso be set.

Creating functions for this kind of work is immensely useful as it enables you to generate rich graphics with a consistent set of styling easily. This is the ideal sort of thing to include in a personal R package.

1. Movie Review Data from Cornell: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/pabo/movie-review-data/ ︎

I ended up finding yt-dlp, an unbelievably powerful command-line tool for downloading and processing YouTube videos. I have no idea how this works on Windows but on a mac, this is an excellent option for downloading video content (especially if you have familiarity with the Terminal or another shell¹).

Installation and Setup

There’s several ways to install, but the easiest in my mind is using Homebrew:

brew install yt-dlp

brew install yt-dlp

I then set up an alias (which is easy when using zsh/oh-my-zsh):

alias ytdl='yt-dlp -f "bv*[ext=mp4]+ba[ext=m4a]/b[ext=mp4] / bv*+ba/b" --output "%(title)s.%(ext)s" --print "Downloading %(resolution)s %(dynamic_range)s" --print "after_move:Saved to %(filepath)s" --progress -t mp4'

alias ytdl='yt-dlp -f "bv*[ext=mp4]+ba[ext=m4a]/b[ext=mp4] / bv*+ba/b" --output "%(title)s.%(ext)s" --print "Downloading %(resolution)s %(dynamic_range)s" --print "after_move:Saved to %(filepath)s" --progress -t mp4'

Usage

This alias mkes actually downloading a video ridiculously easy. Here’s the command:

ytdl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh00VsnzREE

ytdl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh00VsnzREE

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

Details

yt-dlp has an absolutely insane number of options and configuration settings. Seriously—this is a pro-level tool with more capabilities than most people will ever scratch the surface. The alias above pulls in the key options to accomplish my goal of simply downloading a high-quality video that is immediately usable.

• -f sets the filters which define what version or quality of the audio and video to download. The filter string looks for the best quality mp4 video and best quality m4a audio; or if that’s not available, then the best quality format is chosen. The video and audio are usually downloaded separately and combined after downloading.
• –output provides a template for the filename; here its just the video title and extension.
• –print provides useful output in the terminal. First it prints out the resolution and dynamic range (handy for validating what quality video was downloaded); second, it prints out the file name of the final video.
• –progress ensures the progress bar is output in the terminal
• -t mp4 is a preset alias that sets the output format to be an mp4 video using the h264 video codec and aac audio codec. This is a solid general purpose video format.

Overall—this is such a great tool. And I’ve barely scratched the surface here. I can see lots of potential for powering data analysis with the other download options. And lots of potential for automation as well.

1. I personally have used iTerm2 with the zsh shell and oh-my-zsh for a long time. So much more customization and more advanced features. I store all my configuration options for these in my dotfiles. ︎

• Your survival kit is only as good as your knowledge, skills, abilities, and mindset. The kit provides you with the tools; you need to know how to use them.
• What you need depends heavily on where you’ll be, what you’ll be doing, how far away from civilization you’ll be, and how much you can/should carry.
• The “Ten Essentials” provides an excellent structure to think through what you need.
• Almost all prepackaged “survival kits” are a combination of overpriced, too big, too much, and utter garbage. Your absolute best bet is to put together your own kit. Sorry.

What You Need

The Ten Essentials are a formulation of the key things you need for survival in wilderness, originally formulated by The Mountaineers and later expanded on or adapted by many other groups. They provide a basic structure to formulate your survival kit within:

Navigation

At a minimum, you need a map of some kind and a compass of some kind to navigate. A GPS is a helpful addition. Phones and phone apps can be incredibly powerful but must not be relied on exclusively.

I recommend having topographic maps for areas you’re planning on hiking/backpacking/being outdoors in, and street maps or a road atlas for areas you’re driving in. Paper maps don’t ever lose their charge or fail to have cell coverage. In a pinch, however, even a rudimentary map will still be helpful.

While any compass will work, a basic baseplate compass is compact and enables effective navigation using a map. If doing more serious navigation, a better compass with a sighting mirror is nice edge up. So are pace beads, but you need to know your pace and how to use them.

A GPS is supremely helpful, and doesn’t have to be super expensive or bulky. I personally have used my Garmin Foretrex 401 for years—it’s not fancy, takes AA batteries, and handles the essential aspects of navigation easily—adding waypoints, setting a course for a waypoint, tracking routes, displaying time, distance, elapsed time, elevation, and barometer pressure¹, and can display current location using grid coordinates which helps in navigation when using a topo map (with grid coordinate lines) and a grid reader.

For a lot of navigation needs, my phone with the Gaia GPS app is exceptional. You can download offline maps in a wide variety of formats, including topographical maps at different scales and marine charts. It works excellently offline. It tracks trips and routes seamlessly, lets you mark waypoints, and even has a great CarPlay app view. A phone is a great survival tool, but is susceptible to battery drain, so not a bad idea to also have a battery backup pack to recharge your phone as needed.

Lighting

“Two is one and one is none”—in general, you should have at least a headlamp and a flashlight. These can be as expensive or cheap as you want, but you probably should go with LED lights, have spare batteries for them, and make sure they are water-resistant. Many lights are now USB-rechargeable, which is convenient, but I’m wary of those as you lose some flexibility that comes from using replaceable batteries. I’m partial to my Petzl headlamp which has a USB-rechargeable battery pack but can also take AAAs.

Communication/Signaling

If you’re lost in the wilderness, it really is helpful to be able to call for help. A whistle and signal mirror are solid starting points. Beyond that, having a good ham radio (and ham radio license) might be useful (depending on area), and a personal locator beacon (PLB) or satellite communicator is exceptionally useful. Newer iPhones have a built-in satellite communication system that renders PLB devices redundant for most people (assuming you have a way to keep your phone charged).

Sun Protection

Hat, sunglasses (with UV protection), high-SPF sunscreen, and SPF lip balm.

First Aid/Medical

A decent first aid kit (see my page on that), insect repellent, and an ID/medical card. If you have prescription medication that is essential to your daily functioning, you need to have some of that as well. Certain medications—such as blood thinners, high-blood pressure medication, some diabetic medications, and most antidepressants—should not be skipped. If in doubt, ask your physician and/or pharmacist for guidance on what medications you absolutely should be sure to take every day and which ones are safe to skip for a day or two.

Knife/Tools

A good knife is invaluable in wilderness survival settings. I’m partial to the Mora knife—it’s fixed blade with a full tang and well made. You don’t need a machete or a Ka-Bar. Other tools can also be really helpful, depending on your activity:

• a trowel for digging holes to dispose of waste, or digging period;
• A hatchet is incredibly useful for working with wood faster than just using a knife;
• A saw (even a compact wire saw) is so much better at cutting through wood than a hatchet or knife;
• My personal favorite hatchet includes a small saw in the handle. Can’t beat it for camping/bushcraft.
• I almost always have my multitool in my bag with me. Having a serrated knife is great for cutting rope/cordage; small scissors are useful for a multitude of tasks; being able to turn screws is great; and most importantly—pliers are an exceptionally useful tool to have.
• If you anticipate potentially being gone longer than a few days, having a way to sharpen your knife is critical.

Fire Starting

“Two is one and one is none” applies here as well. You should have a lighter and/or waterproof matches, along with tinder; and you should also have a backup ferro/sparking rod.

Shelter

What shelter you need depends on where you’re going, but at a minimum, think about having a way to stay warm and to stay dry. A poncho, rain jacket, or rain tarp are important. Hypothermia is a high-risk condition that can happen even in the summer time, and you need a thermal blanket or bivy to protect you.

I add paracord/cordage under this heading because while it is useful for a wide range of tasks, it is especially helpful for setting up emergency shelter.

My most basic shelter setup is a heavy-duty trash bag which doubles as a poncho and the SOL Emergency Bivy which provides excellent protection against hypothermia while being lightweight and compact.

Extra Food

How much depends on where you’re going to be and how long you might stay there. Having a couple of high-calorie protein bars is a great option, but for longer trips, its not a bad idea to carry an MRE or similar to have more calories.

Another great option here is to be comfortable fasting for extended periods (> 24 hours) while still being fully functional. To get here requires practice—both for the psychological aspect, but also, importantly, for upregulating the metabolic pathways your body requires to effectively get fuel from body fat while fasting.

If you anticipate being in the wilderness for a longer period of time, a fishing kit, trapping/snare wire, and foraging know-how are your best bet at efficiently feeding yourself. Always follow local laws and rules. Trapping/snaring is almost always illegal, and fishing requires a fishing license. In a true survival situation, you’ll do what you need to do to survive, and hopefully the circumstances are such that you’ll avoid any legal repercussions.

Water

You should have extra water, but you also need to have a way to obtain, filter, and purify water. There’s a lot of options here. When space is limited, I carry a compact kit that has plastic water bags and water purification tablets. When backpacking/hiking I usually carry a steripen along with a prefilter device. This pen uses UV light to disinfect water and make it drinkable (assuming its not contaminated with chemicals or too dirty to effectively hit with the light).

You should also consider electrolytes here, and have electrolyte powders or tablets. I think the LMNT electrolyte powders are by far the best, although a different electrolyte blend (higher in potassium) is helpful when fasting. My compact water kit also includes quart-sized doses of fasting electrolytes.

Extra Clothing

Depends on the environment, but you’ll usually want some extras to help keep you warm and dry. Spare socks are mission-critical if you’re walking/hiking.

For cooler environments, a hat and gloves are nice to have.

Wool is your friend—it insulates well even when wet, and doesn’t develop a smell. Wool socks keep your feet happy which in turn helps keep you happy.

Assembling a Kit

Consider the environment you’ll be in, estimate how long you might be in that environment, and use the categories above to figure out what you should have with you. Aim to find the balance between being prepared and not having too much weight and bulk.

Then figure out how to carry it. This depends on the activity, but in general, you want your survival gear to be reasonably well-protected, organized, and accessible. Here are a few solutions that worked well for me:

• A small waterproof hard case—like a Pelican case—provides a high degree of protection at the cost of bulk and weight.
• I’ve had a lot of success using a packing cube with waterproof cases/bags inside.
• A small waterproof sil-nylon bag also works great but at the cost of organization.
• You’ll find a lot of organizers—Maxpedition and Vanguard are popular brands—but I find that they add bulk and may not work for your personal needs.

You can purchase supplies and gear from a variety of places, and my recommendation is to start out small, read reviews, watch YouTube videos, and figure out what you want. Don’t spend money on items you don’t know how to use; you’ll inevitably waste money on doodads and gizmos that aren’t useful, are cheaply made, or don’t work for you.

Deep Dive

Philosophy of Survival Gear

Staying Alive: The gear, plus your know-how, equip you to survive the core threats to your ability to function. So what are those core threats?

• Hypothermia is a key risk when in the wilderness. Even in the summer time. You need to be able to stay warm and dry, which is where extra clothing, shelter, and fire-starting come in.
• Dehydration is another key risk. Not having water sets you up for a heat emergency and severely limits your ability to continue functioning before it eventually kills you.
• You need food for optimal functioning, although if you’re used to fasting, you might be fine for a limited period without any food.
• Sun protection is paramount; we tend to underestimate the danger of sunburn.
• You need to be able to address minor wounds with first aid before they turn into major ones.

Two is One and One is None: You must have redundancy built-in. This extends to having spare batteries for your battery-powered items.

Training

First, as above, the kit is only as good as your training. Get some training—and importantly—don’t rely solely on book knowledge or YouTube videos. Nothing replaces actual hands-on experience. Here’s a brief list of the basic life survival skills everyone ought to be comfortable with, in my opinion:

• Navigation using a street map and compass directions (N, S, E, W).
• Procuring and purifying clean drinking water.
• Starting a fire using a lighter or ferro spark rod and tinder.

If you spend time outdoors, you should also be able to:

• Read a topographic map, identify landmarks, identify bounding lines², and navigate using a compass on a specific heading (i.e., 315º).
• Start a fire in the wilderness.
• Find or make a hasty/temporary shelter.
• Use a signal mirror to seek help.
• Procure and purify water in the wilderness.

So how do you learn these skills?

Taking a hands-on class is the best option—look for a course with good reviews and if possible talk to others who have already taken the class. There’s a lot of charlatans in this space and finding a well-qualified instructor who is good at teaching makes a big difference. NOLS is a great option here. So is REI—stores will often have classes and events, and REI has a reputation for vetting their classes and instructors.

If classes aren’t an option, YouTube is actually a rich source of education, especially if paired with hands-on self-directed practice.

Adding in one or two good survival books is a great way to make sure you’ve covered all of your bases. I personally recommend Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life, by Neil Strauss, and SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere by John “Lofty” Wiseman.

What about Guns/Firearms?

Haivng a gun can be a tremendous survival tool. However, they come with their own limitations, risks, caveats, and frankly, fall entirely outside the scope of this article. In my experiences actually having to survive and actually being lost in the Rocky Mountains, a gun never made a difference or was necessary. That said, if you’re going into the wilds of Alaska, maybe a gun would be a good idea.

What about the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI), SHTF, etc.?

If you want to assemble a bug-out bag or prepare for the end of the world, I’ll respect that. That’s an entirely different level of preparedness, and frankly, a bulky bug-out bag is not necessary for almost any real-world scenario you’re likely to encounter.

1. Monitoring barometer pressure is invaluable for watching for severe weather, especially when in the mountains. ︎
2. I’m not sure if this is the correct terminology. I’ve also heard them referred to as “fences”. The idea is to identify natural landmark “lines” on as many sides of your area as you can. This could be a highway, a river, or a prominent ridgeline. Navigating using a compass to a specific point is challenging, but navigating in a general direction and knowing you can hit somewhere along that line is much easier. If lost, you just need to head towards one of those lines and then follow that to a known point. ︎

• 911 Emergency Medical Response: In this setting, we are the intersection between public safety and emergency healthcare. We respond to 911 calls, assess our patients, provide some stabilizing treatments, and (usually) transport to an emergency department. Our training focuses overwhelmingly on this role.
• Interfacility Transfers: In this setting, we monitor and transport a sick patient from one healthcare facility to another. EMS treatments are rarely needed and we functionally are something akin to a hospital bed combined with a taxi. Surprisingly, our training spends very little time on this line of work and yet it is commonplace outside of municipal EMS agencies.
• Special Events/Standbys/First Aid: While there may be a transport component to this work, most of it involves being a medical resource for medical needs at some kind of an event. Medical needs are typically minor, and care typically fits within the scope of a typical first aid class. There are occasional exceptions—many of the sickest patients I cared for were athletes participating in Ironman races—but by and large, this is primarily about handing out bandaids and OTC meds and being available in case an attendee starts having trouble breathing, chest pain, or worst-case scenario codes.
• Community Paramedic/Mobile Integrated Health: This fourth role is becoming more widespread, and typically augments a 911 EMS system with the addition of a service that essentially blends traditional paramedic practice with home healthcare and social work. In this capacity, paramedics have proven they can solve a number of problems that traditional transport ambulances and home health cannot, in part because of our training and mindset, and in part because of our scope of practice and licensure.

There are other practice areas as well—industrial paramedics, travel/expedition medicine, and paramedic techs in hospitals or other medical facilities come to mind. But they are much less common and more focused on individual paramedics versus the system structure as a whole.

Why does EMS matter?

EMS is expensive. Ambulances are expensive, and ambulance rides are costly. So why is EMS important? Why not just call an Uber, which often has faster response times and is definitely cheaper?

Fundamentally, EMS is worth the added costs primarily because we’re able to immediately start critical, time-sensitive, life-saving interventions. We bring the knowledge, training, and equipment necessary for these treatments, and depending on the patient’s condition, delayed treatment while getting to the hospital could be extremely detrimental.

EMT-Bs are insufficently trained to provide necessary critical treatments

Sure, an EMT with an AED and a BVM could absolutely manage a cardiac arrest pretty effectively. And EMTs can apply tourniquets and pack wounds. But there are many treatments that are outside of the scope of most EMT-Bs and require further knowledge and training to be competent at. EMTs can’t typically start IVs and administer parenteral medications (outside of IM epinephrine and IN naloxone in some cases). They can’t recognize lethal dysrhythmias, differentiate between different causes (and necessary treatments) for serious shock, and aren’t adequately trained for advanced/invasive airway management beyond placing an i-gel or King supraglottic airway.

EMT-B is the EMS career entry point

EMT-Basic is rarely more than a semester-long course and could easily be completed in a month (with a relaxed full-time schedule). It’s more than a first-aid course (but not much more!) and provides a comprehensive introduction to the world of EMS for someone with no background at all.

This level of training is the bare minimum for someone working on an ambulance¹. And this is arguably enough training for someone who is transporting interfacility patients who are abundantly stable and whose primary reason for needing an ambulance is something like being unable to sit up.

EMT-B is not enough

The standard makeup of most ALS ambulances is an EMT-B and a paramedic. Functionally, this is the bare minimum. The paramedic can handle more complex cases while the EMT-B can handle the lowest-acuity calls, assist on other calls, and drive the ambulance. However, this puts the paramedic at a huge disadvantage. Advanced procedures can only occur one at a time. The paramedic has to continually switch between a global, team lead perspective and a task-focused perspective, a skill that is challenging for experienced paramedics and is rarely intentionally discussed or practiced in initial education.

Advanced EMTs (formerly known as EMT-Intermediates) have more education and a broader scope of practice. They are able to offload many interventions from the paramedic and honestly should represent the minimum certification level on a 911 ambulance.

There are quite a few EMS systems that run all paramedic crews. While this makes scheduling, training, and designing protocols simpler, it does come with some major downsides. The biggest downside is skill dilution because each paramedic is now doing fewer of the key critical interventions per year. A robust high-fidelity simulation program paired with a regular, recurring cadaver lab session can mitigate some of this skill dilution but is expensive and complex.

1. Yes, I know “ECA” or “EMR” is traditionally the lowest level EMS-certification, but that is aimed at first responders, not transporting ambulance personnel, and I’m choosing to ignore it almost entirely in this post. ︎

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

This quote, from an otherwise forgettable book by a generally solid science fiction author, has resonated with me for years and encapsulates my personal philosophy on what general competence should look like.

At times, I’ve even viewed this as a checklist, and have managed to complete almost everything on here, with the exceptions of planning an invasion (unless paintball counts) and dying gallantly. And I generally agree that most people would be better off if they were capable of doing most of the things on this list.

Speaking more generally, this quote pulls at the idea of being a “generalist”—something that runs counter to a lot of conventional wisdom on the value of specialization. By virtue of my ADHD and rampant curiosity, I tend towards being a generalist and this quote provided me with some validation that I wasn’t entirely off-base. More recently, I read Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein, and found that it confirmed the value I’ve seen in having outside approaches to problem solving by cultivating interests and competency in numerous areas.

Being a competent generalist means having the knowledge, skills, and abilities to handle oneself in (nearly) any situation you might encounter. This generally makes life better. Need some food? It’s pretty useful to be able to cook your own meals. It’s even better if you’re able to cook well and share truly great food with others. Need to solve a problem? It’s awesome to have a range of problem-solving skills available. Something’s broken in your home/your car/your kid’s toy? Having the ability to figure out why something isn’t working and then fix it is quite useful—not to mention its a great way to save money and to reduce waste.

I can’t do better than Heinlein’s wordsmithing, but here’s my attempt at capturing things a modern man should be able to do:

• Care for a small child (including changing a diaper).
• Hunt/fish and prepare food. There is something primal and essential in being able to harvest your own meat—field (or water) to table.
• Cook and bake competently—a good test case would be preparing (from scratch, no cheating) a four-course meal consisting of a Caeser salad, butternut squash soup, a whole roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, sauteed brussels sprouts, a legitimate pan sauce,