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 wanna 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 you know

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 pad 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 may 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 this 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 Lil Jon be

without The East Side Boyz?

In da Vinci's time, paintings were often done

collaboratively in 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 Verrochio'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 in 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 going to set out to make the best thing ever

as that's impossible, you could 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/Thomas

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