The Power of Polymathy: Why Generalists are Now Ruling the World

polymathy is a term we’re all familiar with in our day and age.

maybe you’ve came across this word on social media, maybe through another article you’ve read, or you just happen to cross it randomly.

whatever the case may be, it’s something to definitely pay attention to.

whether you believe it or not polymaths in this day and age are diminishing.

we live in a society where specialization is becoming the norm and generalization is becoming buried.

the idealization of the career, the 9-5 job, the occupation.

all of this is becoming glorified, at the expense of creativity, authenticity, and curiosity.

it’s becoming scary honestly.

but you shouldn’t lose hope with this realization, because being a generalist, and a polymath in multiple domains, reaps its own advantages that specialization can never reach.

the truth is, anyone can become a polymath.

yes, anyone.

people think you have to be born with genius level intellect and be some prodigy since birth to be able to master different domains.

it’s totally not that. your mind is malleable, it’s variable to grow your knowledge base, not fixed.

and by the end of reading this, I’ll show you that it’s actually not that hard to become a polymath, you just need a mindset shift to be able to see it.

the rest is just heavy lifting through experimenting and educating yourself.

it’s currently 12:56 PM as I write this, AC blasting in the house to cool me off in this scorching hot weather. airpods in to some Halo 3: ODST music, deference for darkness playing low jazz in my ears, dialing me in.

leonardo da vinci’s biography is out, my mind flowing with ideas and various thought experiments about the topic of polymathy. there are so many ways to approach this topic thanks to the amount of disciplines at my disposal.

chess, psychology, history, neuroscience, philosophy, ethics, business, theology, chemistry, biology, coding, economics, statistics, literature, art, film.

the list goes on, with absolutely no downsides, and I’ve always wondered why society has favored specialists, when generalists have all the advantages available.

we’ll dive into this shortly, so as always, do approach all of this with an open mind.

let’s get into it.

before we get to the bread and butter of polymathy, this is something I want you to understand.

specialists and generalists are obviously different terms that may ring a bell for you.

as a specialist, you would be someone that develop expertise in one domain, job, or field of study.

you can be someone in the medical field, like dermatologists, dealing with the study of skin and skin issues, or neurologists, dealing with the brain and nerves.

or you can be a specialists in business, like marketing specialists for ad campaigns, or financial specialists, dealing with managing money.

these kinds of individuals essentially just focus in the lanes they’re competent in.

polymaths are a specialized type of generalist, they have a broad range of knowledge and skills across different domains.

you can be someone that is knowledgeable across history, psychology, philosophy, and ethics, branching all of those disciplines together.

most people are knowledgeable in just one or two domains.

but polymaths take it a step further and dabble in three domains or more.

this is genuinely what separates them from everyone else.

and no, I’m not speaking down on specialists. they’re genuinely necessary in society today.

but being a generalist counters one dimensional thinking, which we’ll touch on next.

“i suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” - Abraham Maslow

you might be asking, “don, how does this connect to polymathy?”

i’ll explain why.

the man with a hammer tendency or syndrome describes this. you have only a limited amount of mental models, maybe one or two, inside your head.

some of us become prone to using these same mental models, or solutions, for all the problems that come your way.

a hypothetical example, if you’re someone that is a therapist who studies psychology, and that is all you know, trying to tend to someone who needs financial help won’t get the help they need if the conversation is about money.

the same key cannot be used on all doors, one size quite literally doesn’t fit all.

and here’s the problem when you let this tendency take a hold of your life.

you approach all your problems with a limited perspective.

imagine you have a wall in front of you, it’s completely smooth, made of bricks and plaster.

you need to get to the other side of this wall to get to your destination, but don’t know how.

if you’re an expert climber, and that’s all you know, you’re gonna attempt to climb over the wall to no avail, there’s nothing to grip on, right?

unless you’re Spiderman or something, if climbing is the only solution you have, then you’re not getting through.

if you’re a generalist and a polymath, the man with a hammer tendency won’t take a hold of you. you would approach this wall like you’re Green Lantern or something.

you would create a door to get through the wall, dig under the wall, build a staircase to over the wall, hell even get a bazooka to explode the wall to get through.

this is polymathic thinking at it’s finest.

instead of thinking of one solution to all your problems, you would have many solutions to one problem.

you quite literally dismantle the man with a hammer tendency altogether.

this connects to the next point we’ll touch on.

“a human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. specialization is for insects." - Robert A. Heinlein

this is one of the more important sections of this article, so do pay attention.

cross-domain thinking is one of the most powerful forms of thinking in this generation, by far.

the biggest writers I know, and the most successful people I know personally think through this lens.

when you’re a polymath, cross-domain thinking is your bread and butter.

instead of thinking in one or two dimensions, you think in three dimensions, even four dimensions because of how powerful it is.

i see this myself when i’m writing. whenever I write on a specific topic that involves neuroscience, I can connect it to psychology, which can connect to real life situations involving human nature.

maybe you see this for yourself too. if you’re having a conversation discussing history, you can connect that with philosophy, and connect that ethics & morality.

the beauty of this lens is that the more you develop experience with this form of thinking, you would notice specific patterns take shape.

and once you notice those patterns, you realize that the knowledge you have is like an interconnected web.

i mean look at what Da Vinci said:

“realize that everything connects to everything else.”

you realize you aren’t confined to one domain of knowledge, you can literally, and I mean literally, think outside the box.

you tend to tap into the right side of your brain hemisphere much more, dealing with creativity.

and the more you cross different domains together, the more the right hemisphere of your brain strengthens, by way of neuroplasticity.

look at Leonardo Da Vinci for example, probably one of the most famous polymaths of all time.

we know him for his famous Mona Lisa painting, and the Last Supper, two of his most famous works ever.

but he also dabbled into other domains too, something everyone overlooked.

he wasn’t just a painter, but also studied anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, sculpting, and paleontology.

he created the Vitruvian Man, designed planes, bridges, and war gear in his personal notebooks.

would we still have known him for just painting alone? yes. but he was more than that. he was able to thrive in the Italian Renaissance and stand out above everyone else because he wasn’t afraid to study different domains.

this is the power of cross-domain thinking, a key to polymathic thinking.

here’s where it gets interesting, so do pay attention to this section.

the psychology behind polymaths are honestly the most intriguing, after meeting some myself and researching about other polymaths.

one trait I’ve noticed behind why polymaths think they way they do and navigate life the way they do is a result of high openness.

this is one trait of the Big Five personality dimensions.

you’re essentially open to new ideas and new experience, or, open minded in general. you’re driven by a high level of curiosity for novel things.

if you’re someone that demonstrates high openness, you welcome uncertainty with open arms, and as a polymath, you would embrace this same uncertainty with the aim of extracting value or learning something new from it.

you essentially don’t stay within the parameters of what you already know, you expand, you diverge, you branch out your knowledge base.

another trait I’ve observed across many different polymaths is that they are complete autodidacts, they self-educate themselves like their life depends on it.

they don’t rely on other people, tutors, or institutions to do the learning for them, of course these are important as well.

but they prefer to go down their own rabbit holes.

if you’re an autodidact, you quite literally explore uncharted territory yourself. you have free will to go down rabbit holes anytime, anywhere, on demand.

and autodidact polymaths have an insane level of curiosity.

i cannot stress this enough: having a genuine level of curiosity is a must.

this manifests in the form reading voraciously, like you’re extremely hungry for knowledge. this also manifests in genuine discussions with other like-minded people, like asking questions to pick people’s brains.

staying curious genuinely moves the needle for polymaths because they cannot go a day without learning something new.

because this is how you grow your intellectual and knowledge base.

the last thing observed across many different polymaths is the desire to not conform to the ideas of many.

if you listen to everyone else, you’ll think like everyone else.

deviating from the crowd is absolutely crucial, because not doing so would lead you to assimilating your own independent thinking to opinions you wouldn’t otherwise align with.

polymathy demands you won’t allow yourself to get caged by the herd mentality bias.

think for yourself, follow your own innate curiosity, go down rabbit holes independently instead of following trendy rabbit holes.

because if you really think about it, you wouldn’t want to dig for gold in a populated gold mine, it would be milked dry of value.

dig for gold where no one is looking, independently.

your fortune will be there, waiting for you.

“the means to learning are abundant, the desire to learn is scarce.” - Naval Ravikant

i’ve mentioned this before but I’ll mention it again.

we live in one of the most advantageous generations.

never has there been a period of time where we have an array of knowledge at our disposal at the ease of clicking a button.

you can access a library of knowledge from centuries ago all online, for free.

the private journal of Marcus Aurelius? leaked, all online for you to view and introspect on.

courses to learn different skills from learning backend coding languages to learning chess from the bottom-up?

hey, you want to learn neuroscience? you’re just a google search away into an abundance of knowledge on your nervous system and brain.

i mean I cannot stress this enough, people before the digital age would kill for what we have today, which most of us are taking for granted.

and a common misconception we may believe in is that geniuses and polymaths alike are born, not made.

though one side of that equation is true, some people are born gifted.

but both geniuses and polymaths can be made as well, depending on the resources available to you.

particularly in polymaths, you can be molded into one.

neuroplasticity is enough proof of this, you can quite literally rewire your identity into one that reads voraciously and thinks in different dimensions.

if you continue to feed your brain evidence to one who has a childlike curiosity to learn absolutely anything, it’ll myelinate those neural pathways to make that same curiosity to learn automatic, more efficient.

it’ll just become who you are as second nature.

and i’m telling you, this is proof anyone and absolutely anyone can become a polymath.

look at me for example, years ago I was just following trends and letting my algorithm dictate my own curiosity.

the moment I wanted to seize the opportunity to learn on my own, that’s when the magic happened.

started experimenting with going down rabbit holes, learning history, learning coding, learning trading, learning investing, further improving in chess, in psychology, neuroscience, the list genuinely goes on.

months and years of deliberate studying and experimenting compounded into the thinking I’ve developed today.

i’m able to reference quotes from different individuals throughout different disciplines almost automatically like I’ve downloaded them into my prefrontal cortex.

but its a result of cross domain thinking and deliberate studying from following my curiosity.

i never considered myself a genius growing up, nor was born with an IQ of 195.

but I was molded into one over time through consistency in my studies and personal dives into rabbit holes.

so remove the notion that geniuses or polymaths are born only, they can also be made. follow your innate curiosity, all the tools to help us expand our knowledge base are in front of us.

and absolutely anyone can become a polymath by way of neuroplasticity.

here’s something I want you to realize before we close this off:

polymathy is not a means to consume as much information and theory as you can.

yes this is all important to educate yourself to a high degree of knowledge, but if that’s all you do, you’re

aristotle described something called, the “telos” of knowledge.

that the endpoint to all knowledge is action. he said it perfectly when he addressed:

“the purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge.”

you need to apply, implement, and embody the knowledge you’re learning from, crossing different disciplines together, and thinking in three dimensions instead of two when it comes to real world problems.

you can use the economics concept of opportunity cost to navigate situations that involve psychology.

you can use statistics concepts to explain financial concepts to a degree where everyone can understand numbers.

you can also branch historical events and neuroscience together to explain a topic you really enjoy, believe it or not.

i mean the opportunities are endless, but if there’s one thing I want you to take away from all this is this:

life becomes more pleasurable when you’re open minded and curious to learn.

when you become a student of life, the journey ahead of you becomes a playground for you to experiment.

that’s the goal if you’re not already a student of life. be one.

don’t become a specialist and only a specialist out of ego, to stay within the parameters of what you already know. learn to branch out, to expand your knowledge base to other disciplines.

because once again, that’s where the magic is.

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