We want to be healthy and look forward to living up to 80s or older. But there is another more important aspects other than just longevity. Quality of life and contributions to society etc.
Not surprisingly, there is also a common denominator or link to these two phenomena. This is beautifully depicted by the accompanying illustration (taken from a Chinese book translated from Japanese entitled ’Winning in the AI Age’), depicting four types of people:
(1) The I-type : The specialist who knows everything about one thing and nothing about anything else
(2) The T-type: The person who places equal emphasis on specialist knowledge (deep and vertical) and general knowledge (broad and horizontal)
(3) The π-type: The person who has two branches of specialist knowledge and yet also a generalist to look at things broadly and horizontally
(4) The Octopus-type: The one who has many branches of specialist knowledge, besides being a true generalist who views thing broadly and horizontally or holistically.
Generally speaking, the Octopus-type is more likely to be an Octogenarian than other types, due to his or her ability to lead an integrative and holistic lifestyle, besides being more creative, since creativity requires the combination / permutation of many branches of expertise and the ability to “mix-match-hack-hatch”.
The consequence of these is the likelihood to achieve well-being / longevity in life and making contributions to society.
Incidentally, this is of course also the intention of proposing a “Portfolio Life” (living broad and deep) vs. “Life Portfolio” (concentrating in acquiring different classes of assets in life) in my recently published book entitled “THIRD CHOICE” (pg. 54 etc. , available at https://amzn.to/2LuxToC )
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