How to Become a Polymath

What is a polymath?

As a blog dedicated to the discipline of polymath, I hope most of the readers have at least a basic knowledge of what a polymath is. If you do, you can skip this section. If not, keep reading on.

A polymath is, in short, someone who has a wide range of knowledge from a variety of topics. This doesn't necessarily mean maths – so don't worry if that scares you! Although, it could also be. The word comes from the Greek poly "many" and manthanein "to learn". At any rate, some of the most interesting people of all times were polymaths, including arch-polymath Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei and US President Thomas Jefferson.

Why bother?

For me, being a polymath has a natural appeal. I want to be a well rounded person, like those of old, who would always be able to talk about a range of subjects and fit in with any peer group. There are, however, more reasons beyond the aesthetic.

For one, polymaths usually have innovative methods of problem solving. The polymath approach more closely resembles how the real world works: complex and interconnected. Unlike the narrow single subject approach, which is in itself a model of the world wherein complexity can be slashed up into many disconnected little pieces. All this does is obscure the ways in which we can actually understand the world.

Becoming a polymath also gives you many transferrable skills. When you go into a new field of work, you will already posses and arsenal of useful skills. It's hard to say when any particular skill will become useful, but rest assured, they will be sooner or later. Also, with a rapidly developing industrial world, it's likely that the jobs around today simply will not exist in 50 years. It's important to stay ahead of this curve.

Becoming a polymath will also teach you how to learn: a critical skill. Learning is the most essential thing we can do to continue to grow and adapt as human beings. Becoming a polymath allows us to optimise this process to an almost super-human degree.

Approaching Academic Topics

One of the most challenging aspects of being a polymath is approaching academic subjects. I think that polymaths should have a good grounding in several fields that wouldn't go amiss at a university – such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, history, philosophy and so on. I think there is an awful lot of bigotry in the modern world that one can not be a good historian without a degree in the subject. This is nonsense. If you seriously try and cultivate this as a skill you will become better at it.

How does one go about this? Well first, I think it would be good to identify the topics that actually interest you. For example, I am most interested in mathematics, physics, history, economics and philosophy. How do I go about learning in these fields? Well, I begin by identifying good entry level books into the topics. I then work my way through the books, reading and making notes, and, most importantly, doing the practice problems. Some of those problems are essay writing which eventually make their way onto this website.

Think of learning as a block by block process. Each block builds off of the last one. So in this way, we move from easier to more difficult textbooks. After a little while, textbooks won't be enough anymore. I think this happens when you start to have questions beyond the scope of what textbooks can offer. This is when you start to dive into the reference chain and find papers, diaries, original sources, that begin to satisfy this. For example, you may start with history textbooks, but soon move to reading journals and letters from people of the time period you are interested in.

Don't Forget Everyday Skills

Everyday skills are so underrated. I think the point of being a polymath is to actually improve your day to day quality of life. This is best achieve by cultivating skills you can actually use each and every day.

I think that physical fitness is of utmost importance. I see it as an investment in myself. I don't think I could work as much as I do without being in good shape – it really makes a difference. Your diet has a huge impact on your mental focus, as does your activity. I can not stress how important it is to stay in good shape: to eat well and move every day.

Cooking is another huge one. The ability to cook home meals is better than can be expressed. I think mastering this skill is beyond important. I won't even elaborate on this one more: learn to cook!

Beyond that… what kind of skills would you want to learn? Again, I can't fill the blank for you, but maybe something you could potentially spin off into a small side business is a good idea? Learning to sew or knit, music, art and so on could all be good candidates here. Chess, I imagine, is very popular among polymaths.

Advice on Learning and Organising Your Time

Organising time is in itself a skill. I think this is perhaps the most important meta-skill of all. Many people make constant excuses to not better themselves such as "I don't have time" or "I don't feel like it". I think these are a vicious cycle. The reason why one doesn't have time and feels poor comes from the same source: a joyless life. Polymath is the key, I think, to ending this.

I thought hard about how to maximise the amount of time I have. I made sure to get a good amount of sleep every night so I wouldn't crash on weekends and lose most of my Saturday for productive work. I stripped out social media so I wasn't mindlessly scrolling through feeds that I, frankly, don't care about. I set priorities and stripped out everything I didn't think was necessary. I also thought about tasks I have to do often and how I can do them rapidly: like learning to cook very quick by delicious meals, to give me more time for reading in the evening.

All of these things compounded and now on top of my full time job I still have enough time to go to the gym four times a week, write these articles, read a book or two a week, study subjects that interest me and work a lot on personal projects. The best part is, I have never felt better!

The number one thing I found helpful was the Kanban board. Each Sunday, I will make a Kanban board for the week. It's a little like a to-do list, except that you have the ability to drag and drop tasks into a "to do", "in progress" and "done" column. You can add more columns for specific projects, but I think this is fine for a general use. It's crazy how much more effective it is to have this beyond a mere to-do list! I can't explain why, but this always keeps me on track. I like the software called Pomodoro Logger, it has a Kanban board built in, but there are many alternatives.

How to Acquire Books Cheaply

Cost can be an issue with all of this. If you wanted to study many subjects seriously, you may end up needing an awful lot of books. Textbook prices can rack up extensively, but there are ways to mitigate this. For one, there are many places that offer free PDFs or ebooks. I have a tablet and a Kindle for reading these and working from them, which I find much easier than a computer for that.

However, if you do want physical books, try to avoid buying them new. New books are so expensive! I usually buy second hand books, I have found Abebooks to be great for this. eBay is also a classic source. There are many others too though, such as Facebook Marketplace, where a lot of student books end up for cheap. Charity shops can also have some incredible finds in them, where I have managed to get some fantastic books for significantly below market rate. The last two have an element of randomness about them, but I think that's exciting!

Conclusions

Being a polymath takes a lot of discipline. Plain and simple. However, I think the benefits outweigh the work put into it by a lot! This is an excellent way to achieve a very interesting a fulfilled life. While it might be tempting to say that you don't have the time, or the energy, or the money to do any of these things; that's just the instant-gratification monkey talking. There is no instant-gratification with polymath – everything is long term. After weeks of work the benefits very slowly start to become apparent. I wish I was more serious about my desire to become a polymath and actually stick to it like I do now many years ago. Nevertheless, it is never to late to start. I hope to see many more polymaths in the modern world and restore this almost lost art!