Is There Something About Early Specialization That Leaches the Joy Out of an Intellectual Activity

When you specialize early and you're doing the same repetitive movements over and over again your risk of injury later in life starts to increase. Cirque du Soleil decided to have their performers learn the basics of other performers skills not because they were going to perform them but to see if it would make them more creative. They measure their injury rates next to Canadian gymnastics and drop their injury rates by a third. So there's a beautiful parallel to this in non-sporting things which is this notion of burnout that somehow there is something about early specialization that leeches the joy out of an intellectual activity and limits it far too early.