How to Be a Genius_ Leonardo da Vinci's 5 Rules

I don't know about you, but I have always had a problem sticking with just one interest. I want to do everything, and I don't just want to do everything. I want to get good at everything. Now, normally, this is a pretty poor strategy for building skills. If you jump between things too frequently, you never put in the number of hours needed to get truly good at any one thing. But given enough time, energy, and let's be honest here, unhealthy obsession, one can become a Renaissance person. Now, one such Renaissance person, probably the OG Renaissance person, was Leonardo da Vinci. You might have heard of him before from this little-known project of his called the Mona Lisa or through his much more impressive accomplishment of being immortalized as a ninja turtle. More recently, though, he was also immortalized in a huge biographical tome called simply Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson. This book gives us some fascinating insights into what made Leonardo the man that he was. And today, I want to share some of those insights with you so that you can use them to become more powerful than you could possibly imagine or at least a little bit more productive in your daily life. So here are five lessons from the life of da Vinci or as my best friend Martin likes to call him, my boy Leo DV. Lesson number one, present yourself based on what you would like to become, not just on what you are right now or what you have been in the past. Many of us know da Vinci as the mastermind behind the Mona Lisa or his painting The Last Supper, but there were actually periods in Leonardo's life where he didn't even want to look at a paintbrush. During one of these episodes, when he was looking for a new patron in Milan, he drafted a letter describing his various talents, mostly in engineering and military endeavors. The letter he drafted lists 10 specific areas in which he might be of service before mentioning painting at all, of which he writes, likewise in painting, I can do everything possible. Basically, this is an early example of a custom-tailored resume, which Leonardo wrote to get the job that he wanted. So here's what you can take with this. When you're presenting yourself to others, whether it be in the form of a resume or even a Twitter bio, don't talk about things that you don't want to be known about or that you don't want to be doing in the near future. Instead, work to highlight your current interests. If you have to pat things out with your past experience, you might need to do that, but don't put them first and foremost. But on the other hand, don't list things that you can't actually do yet just because you want to do them. You actually do have to be able to deliver to some degree. As it turns out, Leonardo actually hadn't done many of the things that he listed in his letter. A lot of them were just ambitions or ideas. But because he had this genius ability to innovate, usually things worked out pretty well for him. But today, things are a lot more competitive and people don't want to waste time with somebody who really doesn't have experience. So make sure that you can back up what you're talking about. Make sure you have at least some of the skills and experience that you want to present to the world. Now, that isn't to say that you need years of experience in a particular discipline before you can present it because many things can actually be learned in a very short period of time. For example, one of our friends was applying for a job a few years ago in which having experience with a LAMP stack, which is a web hosting stack consisting of Apache, MySQL, and PHP all running on Linux, would have been very beneficial. So in just one weekend, he taught himself how to set this up because it's a pretty easy skill to learn, actually, and that experience actually helped him to land the job. Lesson number two, become a T-shaped person. And luckily, I've got a head start on this because my name starts with T. For the rest of you guys, you might have to put a little bit more work into this, but it's worth it. Leonardo's willingness to shift his focus to entirely new things is part of what made him great. He didn't get caught up in past identities and he didn't limit himself based on what he was already good at. Instead, he relentlessly followed his curiosity wherever it led him, and he filled notebook after notebook with constant observations and questions and thoughts. And due to this constant practice, he not only made himself familiar with many different disciplines, but he became quite knowledgeable in several of them, human anatomy, optics, military engineering, hydrodynamics, and theatrical productions, just to name a few. Oh, yes, and painting as well. And it was partially due to this variety that he was able to excel in so many talents. His creativity and understanding was bolstered heavily by his ability to see and apply patterns from one discipline to another. For just one example, let's take a look at the Mona Lisa's smile. The greatness of the smile in the painting was not an accident. It was informed by obsessive anatomical studies and a desire to understand each of the muscles that control facial expressions. Without this extra layer of learning to pull from, the greatness of the painting overall would have suffered. Lesson number three, know when you are wrong. Leonardo thought deeply and critically about almost everything, which means that he was bound to be wrong at one point or another. Now, in some circles, the practice of sticking to your guns is seen as a good thing, and people who change their mind from one position to another are often labeled flip-floppers. But this kind of a mindset can really keep you from growing and reaching your highest potential. An important part of what made Leonardo who he was was his willingness to adjust his beliefs to fit new information, not the other way around. And he did this even with beliefs and theories that he held dear. For instance, he really liked finding comparisons between the human body and the Earth. And one theory that he held for a while was that the Earth's waters might circulate similarly to that of the human body's blood vessels. But as meaningful as this analogy was to him, as beautiful as it seemed, once he realized that it did not fit the facts, he dropped it and went looking for a new theory that did. So follow in Leonardo's footsteps in this area. Don't hold yourself to your past beliefs if they do not fit the facts. Use the facts to find a more accurate theory to live by. Lesson number four is to collaborate with others. Popular culture often sees genius as a lonely trait. But genius doesn't always hide out in solitude just waiting for inspiration to strike. Inspiration often comes from working with others. And even when genius comes up with an idea on its own, a team is often needed to realize and perfect that vision. For example, Terry Pratchett came together with Neil Gaiman to write Good Omens. All the engineers and technicians at NASA put their collective heads together to get us to space. And of course, where would little John be without the East Side Boys? In da Vinci's time, paintings were often done collaboratively in a studio. And because of this, determining whether or not a work is an original Leonardo is difficult because many of his works weren't done alone. Even if the original vision was his, the work itself was often done by a team, both early in his career in his mentor Verrocchio's studio and then later on in his own studio. Now, this might seem crazy to think about at first, but given the time, it's really not that different than multiple people working together today to create an animated character in a movie or a video game. Most 3D characters are created by multiple artists. Some work on textures, others work on rigging, and still others study reference material to make sure the animation itself is realistic. And even putting painting aside, many of the other great ideas da Vinci had were inspired by his conversations and his work with others, others whose names have been forgotten but whose contributions live on. As the Jesuit priest Father Strickland once said, a man may do an immense deal of good if he does not care who gets the credit for it. Today, we seem to have this particularly strong fixation with building a personal brand, both online and offline. We wanna make sure that our work has our name on it. But if you can get away from this temptation a bit, if you can embrace collaboration and be quick to credit people for their ideas and contributions, you're gonna get a lot farther because your work will be better. Also, somewhat ironically, people will tend to like you more if you're quick to credit others because, well, you won't look selfish. That brings us to lesson number five, which is to be wary of perfectionism. Looking at Leonardo's accomplishments in retrospect can make him look almost superhuman in his brilliance. But while he was still alive, it wasn't the only thing he was known for. The same perfectionism that drove him to new heights also kept him from being very reliable to others. He rarely finished anything, including some large projects that he had been paid to do and had agreed to finish. After procrastinating on what could have been one of his greatest achievements, a mural commemorating the Battle of Anghiari, eventually getting a new contract with a later deadline, failing that deadline as well, and then eventually just abandoning the entire project altogether, he never again received a public commission. And not only did this trait make it difficult for Leonardo to find work compared to his more flexible peers, it also didn't seem to sit well with Leonardo himself. As he obsessed with leaving a legacy while simultaneously leaving project after project unfinished he repeatedly scrawled in his notebooks, tell me if anything was ever done. Tell me, tell me, tell me if I ever did a thing. Tell me if anything was ever made. Hundreds of years later, Leonardo may now be more respected for his unwillingness to produce work that was just good enough, and you may well respect him for that yourself, but it's also important to know when to just be done. It is okay to simply finish something to the best of your ability right now and move forward, and it's far better than just not finishing it at all. And this is especially true because regardless of what you view as perfection right now what you're gonna be able to produce in the future will be far better. Every single time you finish a project you gain new skills, you gain new insight, and you become more capable of creating better and better work. Now perfectionism is a big problem, so let me imperfectly solve it here with just one quick tip. Give your perfectionism constraints. Don't say I'm gonna set out to make the best thing ever as that's impossible. You can always put more time and energy and effort into it. Instead say I'm gonna make the best thing that I can reasonably make within this timeframe and this set of constraints. In the long term, just remember that trying new things and making mistakes is a large part of how we improve ourselves. Much like Frieza, you have to lose a few times in order to reach your final form. And the faster and more often you can embrace imperfection, the faster and closer you'll get to your highest potential in any area, your version of perfect. So to quickly summarize, first present yourself based on what you want to become. Second, become a T-shaped person. Third, know when you're wrong. Fourth, collaborate with other people. And fifth, be wary of perfectionism. Now in the intro for this video, I mentioned that all the lessons we just talked about were inspired by Walter Isaacson's biography of Leonardo da Vinci, which was simply titled Leonardo da Vinci. And if you'd like to experience this book for yourself and also start learning a bit more about his life, you can actually start listening to it today for free on Audible by going over to audible.com slash or by texting Thomas to 500-500 on your phone to activate a free 30-day trial of Audible service and get a free audiobook download of your choosing. Audible is the internet's best place to get your hands on audiobooks. Not only do they have all the best sellers and lots of obscure titles, but they also have titles across every kind of genre you're going to want to listen to. Science fiction, biographies, psychology titles. And when you're a member, you get one credit that is good for any audiobook in their library every single month, plus two Audible Originals that you cannot get anywhere else and access to over 100 different exercise and meditation programs. 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