Becoming a polymath
For 7 years, I’ve been focused on mastering one field. Now I have a different outlook.
In late 2019 I was introduced to the notion of a polymath, a concept that had been around for years, but was foreign to me. As I learned about what makes someone a polymath, it became clear that it it is an incredible framework to live your life with.
A polymath is a someone who masters and makes significant contributions to three or more different fields throughout their life. The core of the concept is a theme of continuous learning and personal growth in new and unfamiliar areas. A polymath scores high in versatility, creativity, open mindedness and unity and can work across multiple disciplines. This can mean having multiple different, seemingly unrelated careers during one’s lifetime.
Unlocking one’s maximum potential is often a result of acquiring a diverse set of skills and the ability to make connections across different types of problems. Polymaths are often more innovative and create greater value, as they ride the waves with jobs of the future that do not yet exist today.
Polymaths have been a part of history for hundreds of years and include people like Aristotle who was known as a philosopher, but researched many fields such as physics, astronomy, geography and geology; Maria Agnesi the first female professor at a university, who was a mathematician, theologian and physicist; as well as Isaac Newton, who wrote more about theology than science. The most famous example is Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci gave birth to the renaissance man and was an architect, scientist, painter, engineer, writer and mathematician and contributed significantly to each field. With many of the greatest people in history being masters of many fields, versus one, I wanted to better understand why society has fallen into the current era of specialization. Are we really better off to be a “master of one” than a “jack of all trades”?
As children, we have a natural, deep curiosity to the many facets of life. This is discouraged as we move through the education system where we’re forced to select a single field by the time we’re 16 or 17. We’re told by those around us that we must specialize, so that we can major in the right university program, graduate and then get a job in that field, which we’ll spend the next 40+ years working in. This has been the standard progression for decades. Alternatively, the opportunity to learn through broad and multi-disciplinary programs would foster systems thinking that sets young people up for a diverse, impactful and rich life. People often end up in jobs that they hate, counting down towards their retirement. It’s almost never too late to embrace your curiosity in adult life and find a new passion that you can spend time mastering and being fulfilled.
The human brain is under utilized when it thinks about a single topic or field for countless years. As people invest more time towards one area of specialization, it’s inevitable that they will see diminishing returns with their learning, growth and may likely limit their potential to impact the world.
A Different Approach
Author of The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility, Waqas Ahmed, is one of the first to study the makeup of a polymath. Ahmed has put together an inspiring book that provides a useful framework for those who want to consider a diverse career path. He writes, “versatility (core to being a polymath) is the ability to move seamlessly between various seemingly unrelated domains. Today, versatility is a skill most spoken of in the realms of music, film and sports. But it’s of course demonstrated in every sphere of life. Why shouldn’t we as humans, take advantage of the ability to do anything that we want in life.” The amount of accessible education and knowledge for people to learn new skills is almost limitless, with thousands of online courses available on MOOC sites like Coursera, Udemy, Udacity and Code Academy. We can work to become experts in new areas without needing a new university degree.
When people change from one field, or one skill to another, with that change brings new connections both within the brain and within your life. And these skills or fields don’t necessarily have to be connected. Ahmed shares that, “each specific life or interest is worthy in its own right. The switching between different changes can overcome one of the biggest problems with a specialized life and that is diminishing returns.”.
The average person works for 40 years from their early 20s until their mid 60s. That’s about 80,000 working hours, excluding time for sleep and other activities. Journalist Malcolm Gladwell famously demonstrates that it takes 10,000 hours of consistent practice to master a new skill or field. That theoretically means that a person can have 8 totally different careers in different fields sequentially without connections between each other. It’s an inspiring model.
Personal fulfillment arguably stems more from being useful than anything else. I propose we invest time levelling up with new knowledge and skills, so we can leave this world better better off than when we came into it and be fulfilled. I would also challenge you to reconsider the idea of retirement all together. When work no longer is just about what you do between 9 to 5pm, it’s realistic to continue fulfilling work long into your third act (65 to 85+). I witnessed this first hand with my own grandfather, who launched a TV network in his 80s with no prior knowledge in the television business. He lived until his late 90s and I believe it was because he had immense purpose and did good work throughout his entire life.
Ahmed explains that we should be revising the notion of work all together. The ultimate objective of education then changes from simply being a decades long initiation ceremony for the reassurance of employers to being a 360 degree exploration of life and the human condition. The activity that one engages in to provide a means for survival and accumulation need not take up the majority of one’s time, let alone define them. Even hunter gatherers, who many assumed to be in a constant struggle for survival only spent the equivalent of two to three days a week focusing on acquiring food. The separation of work and leisure wasn’t always so stringent. Work ought to encompass all activity, paid, unpaid, intellectual and practical that has a survival or developmental value in human life. A consistency amongst polymaths is that they don’t necessarily see their work as careers or professions in the conventional sense. They demonstrate that work, should not be a chore and our day jobs not a label by which our entire existence is defined and perceived.
Creativity
Creativity has long been at the core of human advancement. Albert Einstein, famous for his advancements in science and physics, taught himself new creative skills totally outside of those fields including piano and the violin. This allowed him to take productive breaks from his physics research and activate different parts of his brain. It was often while Einstein was playing music that he would have a breakthrough on a physics problem he was stuck on. Studies have found that Nobel Prize-winning scientists are about 25 times more likely to sing, dance or act than the average scientist. They are also 17 times more likely to create visual art, 12 times more likely to write poetry and 4 times more likely to be a musician. Creativity is not just associated with the arts though and is a key component of many human experiences, from computer science, to journalism, engineering, politician and marketing.
“If you have a creative mind you can seek to develop ideas in almost any field. “ — Edward de Bono
Connecting the dots
Where does this all leave us in a world where many people are strapped for time and already spread thin with their primary job. As David Epstein reports in his book Range, there is evidence that developing diverse disciplines can fuel creativity and productivity. While the pursuit of a second or third interest may seem like a distraction or spreading yourself too thin, it can boost your success in your primary and subsequent fields. Epstein argues that the generalist, not the specialist will lead to more innovation.
When one spends years, focused on one area, and then learns another, they can cross pollinate across both fields and not only level up their own growth, but make themselves a more valuable asset to the work that they do and open themselves up to new opportunities. Having knowledge, experience and skills across two or three different domains, versus being hyper specialized in one, makes a polymath more rare and competitive in the job market. Ahmed writes, “the best niche is found at the intersection of multiple seemingly unrelated fields. The future belongs to those who can combine forms of knowledge and different skills”. To illustrate this point, imagine two individuals, one who has been working for 30 years practicing law, and a second who spends 8 years practicing and then spends evenings and weekends learning product management online. This individual then shifts into a second career working at a tech company. They shape the future of their company’s product while drawing on their critical thinking, creative and problem solving skills from their experiences as a lawyer to produce incredible work. The second individual becomes an expert at two different niches and transforms themselves into a highly unique asset. There will be less competition in the future for the lawyer turned product manager compared to the first individual who is hyper specialized in one field.
Many of the jobs that exist today will be automated and replaced by some form of artificial intelligence over the next 15 years. AI expert Kai-Fu Lee predicts up to 40% of today’s jobs will be replaced by artificial intelligence. Taking the steps to learn multiple skills and doing work humans are uniquely good at will set one up for a fruitful life. Lee advocates that work, which is creative or compassionate in nature will be very difficult to be substituted by a machine. This can include careers focused on social care, marketing, teaching, the sciences or art. Whatever it is, teaching oneself to become a continuous learner will result in the ability to do meaningful work without fear of being displaced.
Examples of present day polymaths include Bob Dylan, Jared Diamond, Elon Musk, Takeshi Kitano, Richard Branson and Noam Chomsky. One that is truly inspiring is Mae Jemison who started out as a dancer and then became an engineer, physician, tech entrepreneur and a NASA astronaut who was the first black woman to travel in space. After all that she’s only 63 years young.
Getting started
If you’re thinking you’d like to explore a polymathic path for, spend some of your free time learning new skills in areas that interest you. It can be anything. After a stretch of continuous study, the brain does become exhausted and reaches a saturation point, so if you turn to another, unrelated activity you may find you can better apply yourself. Start by learning a language, psychology, journalism, programming or artificial intelligence. Start contributing to the community and your social circles through the areas and skills that you are passionate about. There are meetup groups in major cities for like minded individuals and if one doesn’t exist, create it.
Sal Khan from Khan Academy explains that researchers have known for some time that the brain is like a muscle; that the more you use it, the more it grows. Researchers have found that neural connections form and deepen most when we make mistakes doing difficult tasks rather than repeatedly having success with easy ones. What this means is that our intelligence is not fixed, and the best way that we can grow our intelligence is to embrace tasks where we might struggle and fail. Of course there are mortgage payments to still make and children to feed, so it may mean the progress is slow, but with the enough time invested and deliberate practice, people at any point in their lives can learn almost anything and contribute in a new way.
I acknowledge that this is a different approach to one’s career. One that is contrary to what many people have practiced or preached. But I believe that the opportunity is too important and valuable to pass up. Personally, I’ve spent most of my own career in tech sales. This year, I’m investing in completely new skills that put me outside my comfort zone. I’m learning how to play the piano, which was a natural fit with my love of the arts, as well as learning data science and machine learning skills to impact the world through AI. I’m also spending more time creating things in general, which includes writing publicly, to share experiences along my journey.
It can start with a simple activity: sit down with a blank sheet of paper and write down ideas that you’re interested in, passions that you have or skills you’re curious about. Pick one or two and create a plan to start working towards it. The key is consistency, so commit for a minimum of six months to create meaningful progress. I invite you to start your journey towards becoming a polymath and refuse to be pigeonholed. Embrace the versatility, creativity and unity that life can offer you when you grow beyond your current work.
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