The "I Want To Be Like Leonardo" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Looking over the dozen or so stories I have saved which I began at one time or another and never finished.  Some of the stories are a few years old while one I began two weeks ago and abandoned.  

Leonardo da Vinci, self-portrait, 1512

But, as I read a recent story about Leonardo da Vinci, written by Tulane professor of history Walter Isaacson, I found I have some of the same qualities as him.  He had so many projects that he had started during his lifetime and never completed that they make him almost human.  Almost!  If only I could have accumulated some of the impressive projects he abandoned, I too would be a genius.  Maybe!  Of course, the things he did complete, such as the Mona Lisa, put him in a class that holds very few other human beings.  There are other people who were considered to be a genius, but they were a genius in a particular arena while Leonardo was a genius in many disciplines.  But, he was also very human and his life offers an abundance of lessons for all of us.  The following are a few bits of wisdom, as listed by Mr. Isaacson, that we can learn from Leonardo that may help us in our life as humble pions.

• Get distracted...it's OK to wander off on another tangent than what may have been you main intent, since it makes your mind richer in knowledge.
• Go down rabbit holes...in one of his many notebooks he recorded 730 findings about the flow of water and listed 67 words that describe different types of moving water.  Another notebook of his shows that he listed 169 attempts to square a circle.  He did these things for the pure joy of learning.
• Procrastinate...some of great intelligence and genius accomplish the most when they work the least.  While painting "The Last Supper" he would sometimes paint a stroke, put the brush down and return the next day to begin once more.  He liked to stop, gather all the facts and ideas and then return to his work.
• Make Lists...wow!  I have notebooks filled with lists of things I want to do someday. Now, Leonardo says to put odd things on your lists.  Leonardo's lists have been said to be the greatest testament to pure curiosity the world has ever seen.  Mine haven't been revealed...yet!
• Let the perfect be the enemy of the good...Leonardo abandoned a few of his paintings rather than produce work that was just average.
• Retain a childlike sense of  wonder...at a certain stage in our life we stop wondering about normal everyday things.  We look at the sky and no longer wonder why it is blue.  We should never outgrow our "wonder year" according to Leonardo. 
• Be open to mystery...on one of Leonardo's lists was found, "Describe the tongue of a woodpecker."  A woodpecker can extend his tongue three times the length of its bill.  When not in use it retreats back into the skull and wraps around the head and curves down to its nostrils.  Now there is absolutely no reason you need to know this, but now you do and are so the much better for it.
• Let your reach exceed your grasp...imagine, as he did, how you could divert a river or devise a perpetual-motion machine or square a circle using only a ruler and compass.  There are some problems we will never solve...but learn why.

Now, Mr. Isaacson listed quite a few more lessons that Leonardo found valuable, but I found the eight I just listed to be the most important to me and my quest to be a genius.  Maybe it will happen in my second lifetime. But, then again, it probably will never happen.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.