Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. What many fail to see is that each brings something valuable to the table and that all of these skills combined lead to great ideas seen by large audiences. My observation is that academics often look down on journalists journalists look down on marketers and marketers look down on journalists and academics. I didn’t go to college for any of these skills, but practiced them over time and received coaching on them. In order to become an effective online writer, I’ve deliberately combined academic research, digital journalism, and growth hacking into one skillset. There is a whole cottage industry around time management, but there are almost no resources on divine time management. Elizabeth combined her passions for writing, Christianity, and time management into a thriving coaching business based on principles of Christianity that she promotes through books and articles.
#Autodidactic polymath full
He had to understand the life cycle of coral colonies, and observe the tiny evidence of organic sculpture on the rocks of the Keeling Islands he had to think on the immense time scales of volcanic mountains rising and falling into the sea… To understand the idea in its full complexity required a kind of probing intelligence, willing to think across those different disciplines and scales.Ī more everyday example is my longtime friend Elizabeth Saunders. The idea itself drew on a coffeehouse of different disciplines: to solve the mystery, he had to think like a naturalist, a marine biologist, and a geologist all at once. Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From (one of my top five favorite books of all-time), brilliantly describes Darwin’s first scientific breakthrough: He not only makes atypical combinations of skills, he also makes atypical combinations of personality traits.Ĭharles Darwin, creator of one of the most important theories in history - the theory of evolution - was a polymath too. Author providedĮlon Musk ( who I write about here) has combined an understanding of physics, engineering, programming, design, manufacturing, and business to create several multibillion-dollar companies in completely different fields. We also have modern tech heroes like Steve Jobs ( who I write about here) who famously combined design with hardware and software.Įlon Musk has combined an understanding of physics, engineering, programming, design, manufacturing, and business to create several multibillion-dollar companies in completely different fields. But no one had ever studied them together and synthesized them into a new discipline until researcher EO Wilson pioneered the field of sociobiology in the 1970s. Modern polymaths go against the grain of this popular advice, building atypical combinations of skills and knowledge across fields and then integrating them to create breakthrough ideas and even brand new fields and industries where there is little competition.įor example, people have studied biology and sociology for hundreds of years. Since Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, popularized the concept, many now believe that to become world-class in a skill, they must complete 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in order to beat the competition, going as deep as possible into one field. I define a modern polymath is someone who becomes competent in at least three diverse domains and integrates them into a top 1-percent skill set. Specialists, on the other hand, just focus on knowledge from their own field. In another words, they bring the best of what humanity has discovered from across fields to help them be more effective in their core field.
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