Polymaths and our profession

In her book, Discovering Your Inner Samurai: The Entrepreneurial Woman’s Journey to Business Success, Susan Reid talks about what is needed to achieve business success, especially for entrepreneurs.  In it, she talks about polymaths, who are those people who have multiple streams of passion and are knowledgeable in many areas.  Leonardo de Vinci was a classic polymath and what we call a Renaissance man.  According to Reid, polymaths are (pp. 90 – 91):

• Terminally curious
• Read widely
• Able to focus for long periods of time on a specific topic
• Fantastic synthesizers
• Great at generating ideas

Gee…sounds like our profession, doesn’t it?! 

In looking at her book and thinking about our profession, these other thoughts came to mind…

Information professionals are often well versed in several areas (generalists) and some of us a real subject specialists. We like diversity in our work, although how much diversity can be different from person to person.  We are asked to be creative in finding information (right brain) and methodical in some of the other areas of our work (left brain).   And while we’re often people who like a good book, we’re expected to be people-persons too.  We may not be ask diverse as Leonardo, but in order to be good at our jobs, we do need to have multiple streams of passion.  Yes, multiple things that keep us jazzed.

Has you considered yourself like Leonardo di Vinci before?  Likely not.  And it is likely that you don’t have the range of passions that he had.  However, you have some similar qualities!  Perhaps it’s time to take a second look at your knowledge and skills, and spend time cultivating those multiple streams of passion that make you perfect for this profession.