Are You a Polymath? You Should Be
Moving beyond self-help
A polymath is defined as ‘a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning (Oxford Languages)’.
I watch a lot of news and have become fascinated with the bookcases in the backgrounds of pundit interviews on TV. You know, those Zoom talking head shots in the expert’s home office? There is always a bookcase in the background and the titles you can make out tell you a lot about the person.
The DC insider-type always has a shelf full of books about politics. The historian has, yup, history. But, for me it is the bookcase with an eclectic collection that interests me, maybe because my own bookcase is pretty wide-ranging.
Which gets me to the topic of self-help books and articles. I’ve read many of them and they are all pretty much the same motivational thing. They offer a shallow bit of advice that makes the reader feel like they learned something that might change their life for the better.
But very little of their advice holds up to scrutiny or time. There just isn’t any real there there. You know, substance, depth, challenging ideas, new knowledge that literally changes your perspective. Why? Because that stuff requires work on the reader’s part.
As I said, I’ve read a lot of this stuff. In most cases it is harmless or…
