How do you Become a Polymath

5 steps to starting the journey

A Polymath is someone who excels in many fields but how can we do that?

1. Combine your interests & passions:

Make a list of your interests, passions, and curiosities. Then make note of where they intersect. You’ll have an easier time pursuing polymathy if your interests, passions, and curiosities intersect. Follow your interests and see where it takes you.

2. Break Ground:

Grab a notebook or your favorite notetaking app & let your interest guide you as you dive into different areas of the topic but set a deadline for stopping. Deadlines keeps us on track and stop us from straying. What’s a good deadline? Follow your interests for a few weeks and write what you learn.

Focus on Foundational Knowledge. How do you know if it is Foundational Knowledge? If it appears multiple times throughout your research, it’s likely foundational knowledge. You can also check with university course syllabi and online courses to see what is considered foundational knowledge.

Follow the 80/20 rule of 80% of your success, comes from 20% of what you do. Identify 20% of the most commonly used words in Mandarin Chinese, and you’ll be able to understand 80% of the conversations.

3. Find your footing:

Now it’s time to draw connections. For example, if you’re studying finance & you wrote about personal finance, economics, assets & liabilities, and see how they all connect. I use Notecards to write the information & later transfer them to Obsidian.md to see different connections.

4. Excavation

Question your connections and identify gaps in your knowledge. The goal is to find foundational knowledge. So, ask yourself if there’s anything else you’re missing.

5. Curing & Clean-Up:

Now it’s time for you to compile your notes into a learning plan.

Why? Because the best way to know if you understand the fundamental is explaining it to someone. This is time where you explain to others what you, ask questions from those who know more, learn, and repeat. From your research, you’ll find the experts in the field and different perspectives.

As you learn more, add onto your notes and continue to make connections.

By now, you should have a decent understanding of the foundational knowledge of the field to not only understand majority of the jargon but also ask better questions to get to an understanding of nuances and other ideas in the field.

These 5 steps will give you the fundamentals to add to your toolbox and be able to apply your knowledge to other fields.