The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility

by Waqas Ahmed

  So as a portfolio careerist, you will often realise that there is additional advantage to the lifestyle. You will be able to benefit from the connections and synergies between seemingly unrelated spheres of activity — ideas, contacts, resources that can be pulled from one project in order to bolster another. With varying degrees of involvement, entrepreneur-scholar-philanthropist Azeem Ibrahim juggles some 40 projects simultaneously, which include businesses, charities, academic institutions and nonprofit organisations. ‘I have found that I have been able to borrow ideas and strategies from different projects to make others more effective,’ he says.

  Benjamin Dunlap, whose daily work involves fields as varied as administration, Asian literature, ballet and libretti has discovered that this lifestyle ‘can generate mind-sets that lead in turn to the discovery of unexpected connections’ insisting that ‘those whose gifts and interests lead them to engage in a great variety of pursuits may in the process create opportunities for themselves that they would otherwise not encounter.’ Quite often in his own life Dunlap has found that ‘apparently unrelated ventures have combined to create a previously unpredictable option, and, in that sense, one could argue that being a wayward enthusiast can sometimes have a practical value.’

  So it is through the portfolio career lifestyle that we can allow the innate multifacetedness within us to thrive through our working lives. It is in this way that we would, according to career specialist Kznaric, ‘be able to develop the many sides of who we are, allowing the various petals of our identity to fully unfold.’ In doing so, we find unexpected connections and are able to make creative breakthroughs in many of our pursuits that would otherwise be inconceivable.

  Polymathic professions

  When people are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work.

  — John Ruskin

  Isambard Kingdom Brunei was a lifelong engineer. But unlike most engineers, he was able to use his skills to build remarkably different things: bridges (including the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol), tunnels (the Thames Tunnel), steamships (transatlantic ships such as the SS Great Britain), railway networks (the magnificent Great Western Railway), buildings and dockyards (the Renkioi Hospital). Most of Brunei’s designs are considered groundbreaking feats of innovation; they remain in use today. In fact, he is considered one of the greatest engineers in modern history.

  We know that historically, polymaths have often needed a platform, namely in the form of a social or professional position, that provides them with a launch pad to explore and contribute to multiple fields. It was their job, their core occupation, that intrinsically allowed (or required) them to be polymathic. For Brunei, it was his job as an engineer.

  In the past there were ‘occupations’ or ‘workplaces’ that encouraged multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and therefore polymathy, such as the Venetian guilds of the Renaissance (painting, sculpture, architecture and engineering) and the royal courts of the Cordoba or Baghdad (culture, politics, scholarship). As previously discussed, a typical example of such a job has been the position of the courtier — which of course came in many forms such as the West African griot, the Arab vizier and the European gentleman.

  But since the Enlightenment — and especially after the Industrial Revolution and the rise of corporatism and state bureaucracies — the royal court (and therefore polymathic courtiers) became a thing of the past and a new polymathic playing field took its place. Whilst primarily serving as a catalyst to the hyper-specialised culture in which we now live, the corporate sector is itself actually becoming a bourgeoning generic field that occasionally produces its own polymaths in a similar way to how science and art has always done.

  Today, there are at least six potential corporate platforms for polymathy:

  The business administrator or ‘chief executives’ — those who demonstrate proficiency in many aspects of a functioning business (finance and accounts, legal, marketing and communications, information technology, business development, logistics and so on);

  The serial entrepreneur, who initiates various start-ups in distinctly separate fields or sectors and who actively participates in (or indeed spearheads) the successful running of each business, consequently becoming an expert on each respective sector;

  The venture capitalist or ‘business angel’ who is involved in numerous businesses in different sectors and of varying kinds as an investor (whether active or passive);

  The business consultant, who advises corporations in different sectors at the strategic levels;

  The Board Member, who has executive and non-executive membership of various organisational boards.

  Also, Charles Handy observed a growing trend of ‘interim managers’ who would hop from company to company (regardless of the sector and type) for short periods ‘caretaking’ an organisation in the interim period leading to a major change. Other employees benefit from ‘job rotation’ policies that seek to keep them engaged and stimulated. Of course, very few of these corporate generalists would qualify as genuine polymaths (they are actually a rare species given that few are able to cross the line from plain generalism to polymathy), but it would be inaccurate to suggest that such platforms are not viable routes to polymathy. In fact entrepreneur and bestselling author of Zero to One Peter Thiel has suggested that the most successful twenty-first-century business leaders tend to be polymaths:

  ‘A lot of the world-class entrepreneurs . . . they’re not specialists, they’re something close to polymaths. So for example with Mark Zuckerberg, he’s able to speak with a surprising amount of understanding about a lot of things . . . he could speak about the details of a Facebook product, the way people think about social media, the psychology, the way the culture is shifting, the management of the company . . . how this fits into the bigger history of technology . . . it’s much more like the polymath-like intellect . . . the kind of board conversations we’ve had over the last 13–14 years . . . it’s just been this crazy range.’

  Other professional platforms also serve to be common routes to polymathy. A journalist can change his editorial or reporting focus from finance, to music, to religion during the course of a career, just as a politician may serve as minister of various departments (say health, economy, arts and culture, sport) over his or her working life. But occupational diversification does not necessarily have to come in the form of the field itself. Instead, expertise in just one field can be exercised or utilised in a variety of ways, via a plethora of professional channels which themselves each require different cognitive skills and intelligences.

  Consider, for example, a psychologist whose exclusive specialty is psychology: she studies (as a scholar), writes books (as a writer), teaches students (as a teacher), advises the government on policy (as a consultant), writes op-eds and articles for a specialist publication (as a columnist), gives public lectures (as an orator), and presents a TV documentary on psychology (as a presenter) and starts a psychotherapy clinic (as a businesswoman). In doing so, she has contributed or applied her knowledge of one intellectual domain to a variety of professional domains.

  Many full-time workers engage in part-time jobs, or are working on their own business to supplement their income. Such a ‘side hustle’ might even be encouraged by the employer who recognises the organisational benefits of allowing its employees to explore other fields. Some even incorporate the idea within their own company’s policies. A classic example of this is Google’s 20 percent time rule, which allows employees to dedicate 20 percent of their time on projects unrelated to their core work activity. As Eric Schmidt (former) CEO of Google says, ‘it provides employees with dignity but also with some choices.’ In fact many of Google’s most successful initiatives were born out of this initiative. One example is the Google Arts and Culture platform, which digitises, publishes and curates high quality visual art content from cultural institutions around the world in an effort to make the world’s greatest art more accessible to people.

&
nbsp; Aside from professional jobs there are also intellectual fields that serve as platforms for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary thinkers. Philosophy, for example, has proved to be both a means and an end for polymaths; a platform (as a method of enquiry) and a destination (as a formulated world view). Perhaps until very recently, philosophy (both religious and secular) in its form as a universal method of inquiry rather than a ‘discipline’ of study — has always been a strong platform for polymathy. As polymath and philosopher Raymond Tallis stated, ‘The only excuse that philosophy has for existing is that it is of utmost generality.’

  It is thus of little surprise, that many of the earlier polymaths (certainly before the medieval period) were philosophers. Whereas before, individuals would become polymaths because they were philosophers, we have recently begun to see individuals become philosophers because they were polymaths. So whereas Aristotle and Al Farabi being philosophers, studied the various sciences and humanities, the likes of Wittgenstein, Schweitzer and Roerich made their philosophical contributions after having accumulated a diverse set of experiences and accomplishments in other fields.

  The truth is, whatever the profession, it can be approached either monomathically or polymathically — depending on mindset and approach. Every occupation, profession or intellectual field — no matter how characteristically polymathic it is, or has the potential to be — can just as easily be turned into a platform for hyper-specialisation. An entrepreneur can become so engrossed with his business that he loses the compulsion to start again in unfamiliar territory. A philosopher can (and these days often does) spend an entire lifetime delving deep into one aspect of philosophical method such as logic or metaphysics. A journalist can spend an entire career reporting exclusively on the Danish royal family and nothing else.

  But it needn’t be that way: whether you are an economist, lawyer, artist, physicist, or politician, efforts can be made to firstly ‘read around’ the subject, participate in peripheral fields, synthesise them and enhance your understanding of your core field. The same goes for professions: it is extremely important to believe that your studies and pursuits other than your main job will ultimately serve to enhance your understanding of and performance in your core specialty rather than distract you from it. It is important to find unity in diversity. So in the case that one’s profession itself is a polymathic one, it being life-long or exclusive no longer becomes a problem — the job itself, to quote Story Musgrave, becomes the polymath’s ‘playing field.’ In short, polymathic professions are a common way to ensure maximum, varied accomplishment in limited time, or to ‘kill multiple birds with one stone.’

  People who specialise for reasons of competitive advantage will find that the latter can actually best be achieved through a polymathic approach. This is because competition need not be linear. In fact, it becomes harder to compete through linear specialisation, where diminishing returns are inevitable. The best approach to competition is creativity, not linearity. Faced with a corporate culture obsessed with linear, mechanistic competition, Steve Jobs once told his employees: ‘We can’t look at the competition and say we’re going to do it better; we have to look at them and say we’re going to do it differently.’ By diversifying in order to create a unique speciality, you can distinguish yourself from others, even in a specialist environment. Refuse to be pigeonholed: instead, create your own pigeonholes which you can frequent at will. But here’s the key: ‘finding your niche’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘specialise.’

  A ‘niche’ is ultimately a form of identity. People are constantly seeking to establish a unique identity for themselves — and polymathy is the best form of identity formation. It allows one to create a uniqueness that surpasses the one pursued so fervently by the specialist. Most decide on their identity very early on in life, and then everything done subsequently serves to reinforce that identity rather than challenge, shift, or evolve it. The same goes for opinions. But identities are constructed before they are carved out. As a great athlete once said about bodybuilding, in order to carve a clay sculpture, you need to have a piece of clay there in the first place. For example, if you had a good understanding of subjects as diverse as physics, economics and art, you could carve a speciality that is unique — perhaps by becoming an art dealer specialising in the atomic vision of Dali or by doing a Ph.D. comparing the influences of atomic physics and visual art on the post-World War II American economy. This way you are using the power of diversity to craft a speciality.

  Imagine three circles, two at the bottom and one at the top, all overlapping. The shaded area where all three overlap with one another is the speciality formed by the polymath. ‘Mining the area between fields will allow you to carve out a unique career path, one that is custom fit to your own interests and inclinations,’ says Robert Greene, author of Mastery. He noted the example of Yoky Matsuoka, the computer scientist who combined her interests and talents in sports, physiology, mechanical engineering and neurology to practically create a new interdisciplinary field — ‘neurobotics.’ The best niche is the one found at the intersection of multiple, seemingly unrelated, fields. Greene concludes that developing as many skills and forms of knowledge is an integral part of the process of becoming a master in any given field: ‘The future belongs to those who can combine forms of knowledge and different skills. All of the modern masters I interviewed exemplify this.’

  Blessings from Above?

  The most common catalyst of any idea is of course money (or its spouse, power), which is why wealthy, powerful patrons have been instrumental in keeping the polymathic tradition alive over the years. Whereas previously these were despotic monarchs, religious and academic authorities and wealthy merchants, they now come in the form of technological visionaries, philanthropists, corporate executives, media tycoons, celebrities and governments — not all of whom are well intentioned.

  Today, the ‘establishment’ comprises the most powerful and influential institutions and actors in a society: governments, corporations (including financial and technological), the judiciary, religious institutions, the military, the media, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, academic institutions, popular celebrities (in sports and entertainment) and possibly a handful of activists. The leading figures in each segment can be grouped and collectively referred to as the ‘modern elite.’ It is often with the consensus (whether deliberately coordinated or by natural acceptance) of this ‘Davos guest list’ — that an idea or a system can be allowed to spread globally.

  But as French historian Jules Michelet noted, history is often decisively shaped by the interventions of the masses. And of course, ideas don’t always need top-down backing to spread like wildfire, as Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller The Tipping Point demonstrates. Ideas have a mind of their own, and sometimes just need a catalyst, a spark to light the fire. Modern ideas to unleash human potential through the revolution of our social structure include, for example, the Venus Project, which proposes the replacement of the current money-based system with a resource-based one. The project thus envisages the freedom of the individual from having to simply ‘make a living’ by doing something that causes her multiple talents and interests to go to waste. Yet the project has remained a small-scale, individual-led initiative that has never really scaled. So the fact remains that until or unless the current money-based, capitalistic system is replaced, wealthy individuals and institutions will often be relied upon to believe in and promote the value of polymaths.

  An Opportunity

  Global inequality is tragically increasing, but so too are the opportunities to reverse it. For the first time in human history, the globalisation of media and technology has allowed for an ever-increasing number of lay individuals to have access to knowledge as well as to opportunities. Internet coverage, mobile phone penetration, availability and affordability of books, mass education, digital media — all important transmitters of knowledge — have reached unprecedented levels worldwide. As Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, say
s: ‘the classic stereotype of the ivory tower academic, the high priest of knowledge, is really being blown away . . . and one of the fascinating things about Wikipedia is the recognition that talent is more widely distributed throughout society.’

  It has allowed for more commercial, artistic and intellectual autonomy (at the individual level) than at most other points in history. This manifests in the significant rise in the number of small- and medium-sized businesses, civil society groups, independent film producers, record labels, TV news channels, newspapers and publishers, many of which are self-funded, anti-establishment, and do not follow conventional models.

  Moreover, transformational technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, cybernetics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, Internet of Things (IoT), Brain — Brain Interfaces, virtual reality, 3D printing and biomedical engineering will develop exponentially and offer the chance to enhance and optimise human performance and knowledge. As the great neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis says, ‘We will absorb technology as part of us — technology will never absorb us. It’s simply impossible.’ This is an opportunity, if we can only leverage it.