“Jack
of all trades, master of none.”
The
warning against being a generalist has persisted for hundreds of years in
dozens of languages.
“Equipped with knives all over, yet none is sharp,” warn people in China. In
Estonia, it goes, “Nine trades, the tenth one — hunger.”
Yet,
many of the most impactful individuals , both contemporary and historical,
have been generalists: Elon Musk, Steve Jobs,
Richard
Feynman, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Marie Curie to
name just a few.
What’s
going on here?
If
being a generalist was the path to mediocrity, why did the most comprehensive study of the most significant scientists in
all of history uncover that 15 of the 20 were polymaths? Newton. Galileo.
Aristotle. Kepler. Descartes. Huygens. Laplace. Faraday. Pasteur. Ptolemy.
Hooke. Leibniz. Euler. Darwin. Maxwell — all polymaths.
If
being a generalist was so ineffective, why are the founders of the five largest
companies in the world — Bill
Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Larry Page, and Jeff Bezos — all
polymaths (who also follow the 5-hour rule)? Are these legends just genius
anomalies? Or are they people we could and should imitate in order to be
successful in a modern knowledge economy?
If
being a generalist is an ineffective career path, why do 10+ academic studies find a correlation between the number of
interests/competencies someone develops and their creative impact?
The
Era of the Modern Polymath
“The
future belongs to the integrators.” — Educator Ernest Boyer
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.
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. Hence the T-shape
below. Specialists, on the other hand, just focus on knowledge from their own
field
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. 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.
For
example, people have studied biology and sociology for hundreds of years. 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. We also have modern tech heroes like Steve Jobs (who I write about here) who famously combined design with hardware and
software.
Elon
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. He not only makes
atypical combinations of skills, he also makes atypical combinations of
personality traits.
Charles
Darwin, creator of one of the most important theories in history — the
theory of evolution — was a
polymath too. 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:
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. 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.
A more
everyday example is my longtime friend Elizabeth Saunders. 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. There is a whole cottage industry
around time management, but there are almost no resources on divine time management.
In
order to become an effective online writer, I’ve deliberately combined academic
research, digital journalism, and growth hacking into one skillset. I didn’t go
to college for any of these skills, but practiced them over time and received
coaching on them. My observation is that academics often look down on
journalists; journalists look down on marketers; and marketers look down on
journalists and academics. 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.
Why
Being A Modern Polymath Is The New Normal
“Study
the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses — especially learn how to see. Realize that
everything connects to everything else.”
—
Leonardo Da Vinci
Polymaths
have existed forever — indeed
they are often the ones who’ve advanced Western civilization more than any
others — but
they’ve been called different things throughout history. This timeline shows
the evolution over time.
There
are several significant changes trending in our knowledge economy right now,
which are flipping the conventional wisdom on the value of specialization on
its head. In today’s world, diverse interests are not a curse, they’re a
blessing. Being a polymath instead of a specialist is an advantage, not a
weakness.
People
who love learning across fields can use that tendency to be more financially
successful and impactful in their career.
What
follows is the most comprehensive case for becoming a polymath that has ever
been created to my knowledge. Then, at the end of the article, I share a
resource with you that will help you become a successful polymath.
Polymath
Advantage 1: Combining two or more skills can make you world-class.
Scott
Adams, the creator of Dilbert, one of the most popular comic strips of all
time, wasn’t the funniest person in the world. He wasn’t the best cartoonist in
the world, and he wasn’t the most experienced employee (he was only in his 20s
when he started Dilbert). But by combining his humor and illustration skills
while focusing on business culture, he became the best in the world in his
niche. In an insightful blog post, he nails how he did it and how you can too:
If you
want something extraordinary [in life], you have two paths:
1.
Become the best at one specific thing.
2.
Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.
The
first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will
ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even
try.
The
second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they
could be in the top 25% with some effort. In my case, I can draw better than
most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the average
standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most people. The
magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes. It’s the combination of
the two that makes what I do so rare. And when you add in my business
background, suddenly I had a topic that few cartoonists could hope to
understand without living it.
Polymath
Advantage 2: Most creative breakthroughs come via making atypical combinations
of skills.
We can
see the power of atypical combinations when we look back at the most
influential papers throughout the history of science. Researcher Brian Uzzi, a
professor at the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, analyzed
more than 26 million scientific papers going back hundreds of years and found
that the most impactful papers often have teams with atypical combinations of backgrounds. In another comprehensive study performed by Uzzi, he compared the
results of academic papers by the number of citations they received and the
other papers they cited. A fascinating pattern emerged. The top performing
studies cited atypical combinations of other studies (90 percent conventional
citations from their own field and 10 percent from other fields).
Polymath
Advantage 3: It’s easier and faster than ever to become competent in a
new skill.
Want
to learn a new, valuable skill to add to your toolbox? It’s never been easier:
The quality of knowledge in every
domain is improving. Researchers and practitioners are systematically improving
and testing every field of knowledge to make it more robust. Cumulatively, old
fallacious ideas are being discredited and new ideas are being added. The
technology field is smarter than it was 20 years ago, for example. So are the
fields of physics and biology.
Second, there is an abundance of free
or affordable content from the world’s top experts in every medium you can
think of. Need a community and expert coaching? There are now hundreds of
thousands of online courses and billions of online videos. This is the golden
era for people who value learning, are willing to invest in themselves, and who
are disciplined enough to take action on their own.
My
favorite example of high-quality, easy-to-access knowledge is a 12-year-old
girl named Adilyn Malcolm, who learned how to dubstep dance in a matter of months by constantly
watching short clips of others online, practicing, and repeating until she
mastered each segment and could perform an entire dance flawlessly.
Imagine
Adilyn trying to learn how dubstep before Youtube. There probably wouldn’t have
been a local dance studio that specialized in dubstep. If one did, the teacher
likely would not have been world-class. Next, Adilyn wouldn’t have been able to
obsessively spend hours learning about it. If any dubstep videos did exist, she
would’ve had to convince her parents to spend $20 a piece on them. YouTube, on
the other hand, provided Adilyn with a chance to learn from many world-class
teachers and performers at no cost and on her own schedule. Today, a search on
Youtube for “learn dubstep” returns over 1 million results!
And if
that’s not impressive enough, consider 13-year-old Michael Sayman. He
taught himself how to code via Google. One of his mobile games became one of
the top 100 apps in the world, beating out Starbucks and Yelp. Or watch
11-year-old Amira Willighagen masterfully sing opera after teaching herself with YouTube videos for
four years. Something big is happening here, and these young prodigies are the
harbingers of it.
As
Isaac Newton famously proclaimed, “If I have seen further it is by standing on
the shoulders of giants.” In today’s era, we have more shoulders to stand on
than ever.
Polymath
Advantage 4: It’s easier than ever to pioneer a new field, industry, or
skill set.
While
the explosion of knowledge is making it impossible or at least more difficult
for anyone to know everything, it has also made it easier to find one big,
atypical combination of fields or skills. It’s easier than ever to be a
polymath.
Here’s
why:
First,
one of the main ways that new skill sets, industries, and fields emerge is by
combining them with old ones:
And
finally, as the number of new skills increases, the number of possible
combinations increases exponentially. Every new chunk of knowledge can
theoretically be combined with every other knowledge chunk. Every new
breakthrough creates the potential for exponentially more breakthroughs.
If you
have one building block (A), you can only make one combination (A). If you have
two (A & B), then you can make three combinations (A, B, A+B). Once you get
to four building blocks, you get to 15 possible combinations, and the numbers
grow dramatically from there. Now consider that there are thousands and
thousands of disciplines, industries, and skills. Each new one creates the
potential for tens of thousands more.
Below
are a few of the many thousands of fields that were created very recently
through combination:
Bottom
line: when I was in high school, I remember reading how a young Leonardo Da Vinci was
frustrated that he was born in a period where everything worth being discovered
had already been discovered. This quote stuck with me, because it was written
by one of the greatest inventors in human history. It’s helpful for us to
remember Da Vinci’s quote, because it’s just as true today. Almost ALL of the
potential discovery that humanity will do is in the future.
Polymath
Advantage 5: It future-proofs Your Career
“It is
not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can
best manage change.” -Charles Darwin
What
do the following six professions have in common?
App developer
Social media manager
Driverless car engineer
Cloud computing specialist
Big data scientist
YouTube content creator
Answer:
None of them existed 15 years ago. Imagine the power you’d have if you could go
back in time, master these skills, and then be one of the best in the world at
them when they hit big? We actually don’t have to guess. You’d stand a good
chance of being a millionaire. The headline below shows just how valuable a
driverless car engineer is.
So
what skills are going to be valuable in 20 years? Do you know?
No?
Neither do I. Neither does anybody.
So the
question arises, how do we make investments in knowledge now that will pay off
far into the future?
I’d
make the case that a polymath is much better positioned than a specialist. A
polymath can take the skills that she or he has learned and combine them in new
ways quickly to master new fields. On the other hand, a specialist whose fields
becomes obsolete would likely take much more time to adapt to the change and
have to start back at the beginning.
In an
environment of accelerating change, we’re going to have to become polymaths to
survive. We’re going to have a dozen careers. Each one is going to require new
skills.
Polymath
Advantage 6: It sets you up to solve more complex problems
Many
of the largest problems that face society and individuals benefit from
solutions that integrate multiple disciplines.
Let’s
take obesity as an example. As the chart below shows, diet and obesity account
for four out of the top fifteen causes of death in the United States. Millions
of deaths that are completely preventable.
From
the outside, you could easily say that solving the obesity crisis is an easy
problem. Just eat less and exercise more. Right? Not quite.
The
chart below from the Diversity Bonus book by researcher Scott Page shows a portion of just how complex the
obesity epidemic is. As you can see, many different fields are needed to solve
this problem: exercise physiology, genetics, behavioral psychology, sociology,
economics, marketing, general psychology, education system, nutrition.
Polymath
Advantage 7: It helps you stand out and compete in the global economy.
One of
the most fundamental mental models from economics is supply and demand (see more
valuable mental models).
It’s relevant to the job market, to goods and services, to the world of ideas,
and to many other places.
In
this model, there are two ways to increase how much of a price premium you
command:
• Decrease the supply (move the blue
curve to the left).
• Increase the demand (move the red curve
to the right).
You
can have the most valuable skill set in the world, but if everyone also has
that skill set, then you’re a commodity. By becoming a polymath and developing
a unique skill set that few others have, then you’ll be able to differentiate
yourself and charge more.
Want a
quick test to see if you have rare and valuable knowledge? Then ask yourself
the same question that self-made billionaire Peter Thiel, one of the top
investors in Silicon Valley, asks candidates he might hire and founders he
might fund, “What’s the one thing you believe is true that no one else agrees
with you on?” This simple question very quickly tells you whether or not you
have rare and valuable ideas. If you can’t come up with anything, it tells you
that you might not be as an original thinker as thought you were.
This
mental model is widely shared among the world’s top investors and performers as
the following quotes demonstrate:
“You
want to be greedy when others are fearful. You want to be fearful when others
are greedy. It’s that simple.” — Warren Buffett, founder of Berkshire
Hathaway
“In
order to get into the top of the performance distribution, you have to escape
from the crowd.” — Howard Marks, founder of Oaktree Capital ($2+
billion net worth)
“You
can’t make money agreeing with the consensus view.” — Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates
(largest hedge fund in the world)
“The
best projects are likely to be overlooked, not trumpeted by a crowd; the best
problems to work on are often the ones nobody else even tries to solve.” — Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and billionaire
investor ($3.3 billion net worth)
“You
have to be odd to be number 1.” -Dr. Seuss
The
weakness of an art is its dogma. And when I’m competing against an individual
from a different discipline, I try to find the dogma of that discipline. When
I’m competing with someone within a discipline, I try to find their personal
dogma. — Josh Waitzkin, Chess Grandmaster & World Tai
Chi Champion
Bottom
Line: Make Yourself Anti-Fragile
Being
a polymath will be the new normal, and polymaths who synthesize diverse skills
to create breakthrough innovations and solve complex problems will have a huge
impact. Generalists who fail to synthesize their knowledge into value for
others stand to flounder in their career, perhaps having an impressive
encyclopedic knowledge, but no real impact.
Meanwhile,
specialists risk getting trapped by their success. They build up a narrow skill
set and reputation and become highly paid for it. But their careers are
fragile. As their professions disappear or evolve, it becomes almost impossible
to switch without having to start over.
Polymaths,
on the other hand, are what Nassim Taleb calls “anti-fragile.” Changes to the
environment make them stronger. As new paradigms of business emerge or their
passions grow, they can quickly combine their existing skill sets in a myriad
of ways.
Now
that you see how important it is to become a modern polymath, the next logical
question is: how?
I
created a resource to help you with just that…
How To
Become a Modern Polymath
“The
greatest scientists are artists as well.” — Einstein
The
idea of becoming a modern polymath can be overwhelming. Where do you start?
What field do you learn first? How do you find the time? How do you translate
what you learn into real world value?”
When I
first started learning across fields, I stumbled. I remember, for example,
picking up textbook on biology, which I hadn’t studied since high school, and
trying to apply it to my life. It was slow and not that useful. In other words,
I picked the wrong discipline (for me) to start with, and I used the wrong
method to learn it. After a lot of trial and error, I learned techniques that
make going across fields faster and easier
During
the hundreds of hours I’ve spent researching how to be a polymath and
interviewing polymaths, one key that I’ve discovered is mental models.
First,
mental models transcend disciplines. They are the invisible links that connect
disciplines together:
For
example, once you learn the “80/20 Rule,” which states that, in many domains,
20 percent of your efforts produce 80 percent of your results, you can use this
mental model to improve efficiency and impact in every area of your life as
well as every field you study forever. You can identify the 20% of
relationships that cause 80% of your feeling of connection. You can identify
the 20% of clients that create 80% of your business. You can identify the 20%
of tasks that create 80% of your productivity. And so on!
Furthermore,
mental models help you learn multiple skills much more quickly, because they
gave your a stable base of useful and universal knowledge that you can use for
the rest of your life. Therefore, when you go into any new discipline, even
though you may not have direct experience with that field, you’ll quickly
notice mental models you can use.
In our
Mental Model Of The Month Club, we delve into a different mental model every
month that will help you become a polymath. We also show you how to combine
those models to make better decisions and have creative breakthroughs. By
joining, you immediately receive a 20,000-word Polymath Mastery Manual where I
teach you everything I know about becoming a better polymath.
If
you’re just learning about mental models for the first time, my free email
course will help you get started. My team and I have spent dozens of hours
creating it. Inside, you’ll learn the models that these billionaires use to
make business and investing decisions — tools you can apply immediately to your
life and business. You’ll also learn how to naturally use these models in your
everyday life.
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