When You Don’t Have One True Calling — Being a Polymath in a Highly Specialized Society (Araki’s Scientific View)
This is part of the “popular series on the science of polymathy studies” (see comments at the end of the article).
In this article, I elaborate on Jin Wu’s article “When You Don’t Have One True Calling — Being a Polymath in a Highly Specialized Society” .
She starts by saying…
There are two types of people in this world — highly specialized individuals, and those that are jack of all trades. some people fall into…neither category.
‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ Adults would often ask kids. It seems that most people changed their minds frequently when they were younger, but as they got older and older, specialization became the norm. Some figured out what they were good at and stuck to that, others figured out their dreams and passions and were lucky enough that their passions actually made money. Some are still searching and are frustrated that they can’t seem to find something that they are passionate about.
Some people seem to be passionate about everything that they set my focus on. It’s hard to stick to just one thing, not because it gets boring, but because there are so many competing interests in my world that eventually something else becomes the center of my focus. ~Jin Wu
According to Irina Trofimova’s Functional Ensemble of Temperament and Araki’s work on Trait Polymathy, this behavior is not atypical and — better than that! — can be associated with specific temperament traits.
First, people with trait polymathy seem to be high in probabilistic processing (PRO). It means that their behavior is easily and naturally oriented to the collection of data in the world and the construction of “theories” on how things and the world work. Being high on this trait means that it can be very difficult to “resist” a new challenge of this type, especially when you are young and your prefrontal cortex is not fully developed as a tool to resist temptation.
As Trofimova and Rusalov put (2007) put, PRO involves adequate understanding and expectations of probable events, efficient extraction and processing new knowledge, classification and learning abilities. Because PRO is part of the Noradrenalin System, people with high values on this scale may also display sensation-seeking behaviour, search for unusual and intense sensations, and a possibility of risk-taking behaviour. A major difference, however, is that PRO refers not to deterministic stimuli (I know that X will feel good and it will bring me pleasure or adrenalin), but to the intellectual game of playing with the probabilities of events and with the qualities of one’s predictions (what happens when certain elements are included or excluded from a system?). The main driver is: “I don’t understand this piece of the world… Can I make sense of it and can I connect this part to that other part?” As seen, the prolonged exercise of this behavior will eventually lead to the acquisition of a store of knowledge that one day might be qualified as polymathic by others or society. But it all starts will curiosity related to probabilistic processing.
Below are my findings regarding the relationship of polymathy and the functional ensemble of temperament.
Continuing… As she embraced her “specialize in everything” habit, she realized a number of things:
1. Having deep knowledge in multiple domains is not a bad thing
Having many backgrounds yourself allows you to connect the dots together quicker and arrive at solutions sooner, not to mention coming up with unusual solutions that are usually not found by focusing on just one domain.
Correct. Even though by this point and after famous Steve Job’s address at Stanford, it is almost common sense by now. In any case, that is part of what the scholars of polymathy are calling “integration”. Thus, polymathy is not only being a superficial generalist (breadth) but also developing expertise to a significant degree (depth). Finally, polymathy also involves making new and effective combinations, developing new and effective cross-applications and developing synergies between seemingly disparate pieces of the world. All these things (combinations, applications and synergies) fall into the category of integration.
2. It helps me to see things from other people’s perspectives.
Specializing in multiple fields allows me to understand others more and draw me closer to them. I also love it when people disagree with me. Every disagreement is an opportunity for me to see things differently. Every disagreement is an opportunity for me to learn and grow.
In the theory of Polymathic Leadership, Araki (2015) lists some behaviors that are conducive to polymathy, both at the individual and at the group level. They include “critical openness” and “cognitive empathy”. Most of the behaviors that Araki lists as polymathic are in fact “combos” of abilities. Being open is associated with creativity, but being too open is a passport for naivete and it can drain one’s effectiveness and focus. Thus, the combination of critical thinking and openness would result in an optimal combo for polymathic people and for teams that need a polymathic approach.
3. The world doesn’t appreciate multi-specialists.
One of my biggest frustrations in life is how specialized society is. There aren’t many jobs designed for a creative individual with deep knowledge in multiple areas. In my leadership class at Harvard Business School (HBS), we talked about finding our sweet spot, which is an intersection of our strengths, our passions, and our extrinsic motivations (such as money and recognition).
“Finding Your Sweet Spot” Venn Diagram, taken from my Harvard Business School Authentic Leadership Development (ALD) course
I look at most of my HBS classmates with envy when they tell me they’ve found their sweet spot. You see, whatever my passions are become my strengths, and whatever my strengths are become my passions. These are overlapping and evergrowing circles that keep getting larger and larger, while extrinsic motivations have little or no influence on my choices whatsoever.
There are a number of good points here. I recommend Angela Cotellessa’s doctoral dissertation on how organizations really discriminate against polymathic people. Yes, it is true, very true. Even the conclusion of the author of the post “doing startups seems to be the closest match” is the same as Angela’s. Very interesting. However, this is heavily moderated by one’s national culture. I really wished all polymaths could have half of the opportunities that the average american has…
Regarding the “sweet spot” issue, I believe it is a consequence of understanding how much such endeavors costs to you in comparison to others. It is an application of the old Ricardian concept of comparative advantage. For a deeper understanding about this psychoeconomic approach, I recommend the article Polymathy: A New Outlook.
4. Being an autodidact comes naturally
Seeing how most of us don’t have the luxury of doing multiple degrees, and school isn’t the only way to learn, being an autodidact became an obvious choice for me. Since the digital media has made so many things much more accessible, it has also made learning much easier. I used to be terrible at languages. Years of French class in middle and high school did little to improve my ability to form coherent sentences. After I started working, I had a bit more time on my hands and decided to tackle language learning, which was one of my weaknesses, as a challenge. I was surprised to discover that you can go from an absolute beginner’s level to a fairly decent level for most languages within months. I started out with Koine Greek, then ancient Hebrew, and then Aramaic. After finishing the three languages in seven months, as an attempt to learn more about religion by going through ancient manuscripts, I practiced by reading through the entire Bible in its ancient manuscripts. After finishing it in nine months (I’m planning on reading through the Quran in Arabic at some point), I went on to tackle almost a dozen other languages, including French. My personal record was learning seven languages in a year. I’m sure many are skeptical by now — how is it possible to learn this quickly? I find that the school system doesn’t have the most effective learning methods for everyone. Being an autodidact allowed me to find a learning style that was more suitable for me. Once I developed learning strategies for — say, one language, it became easier and easier to learn another, and another. I learned faster not because I’m smarter, but because I found the right techniques that worked for me.
Another interesting point. But I understand this as natural result of the points already mentioned regarding to the temperament discussion. Being high PRO enables the person to make good sense of the world and make good, effective models. This ability can become an addiction (stop to think why some people spend ridiculous amounts of time analyzing and sieving through tables and tables of data — for fun!!! — while playing strategy games). They are honing a very special ability whose comparative cost is so low that its exercise becomes fun!
In addition, it pays to take a detailed look at the end of this section. The development and honing of one’s models of the world, including of course their models of learning, is one of the key characteristics of polymathy. Without a good learning model you cannot learn super fast and well in comparison to others and your comparative advantage will shift to the specialist side. Regarding the last sentence, she is obviously smart, but she is inserted in a culture in which it is a bad thing to say that. So her social smarts told them to avoid saying that she was smart — that would increase the her likeability and therefore the virability of her content. Finding, and most importantly, developing the “right” techniques are a trademark of intelligence.
5. Learning is a joy, curiosity is key, and nurture has a lot to do with it
One of the most interesting parts in this section is that the author mentions that her mother “never forced me to learn.” Another important characteristic of many polymaths is contrarianism. For some interesting reasons, forcing somebody to learn something tends to kill one’s intrinsic motivation. It is even worse when the subject has a polymathic personality. This person will often respond by deliberately rejecting the learning that was “chosen” to them, and try to reinstate their sense of self-propriety in often rebellious ways. The authors was lucky that her mother did not trigger this response.
6. It keeps me hungry and humbled
Every time I learn something new, it makes me realize how little I know and how much more there is to learn, in life, in knowledge, in social skills, in political settings. Since I’m constantly exploring new areas, I’m constantly a beginner at something. It makes me realize that everyone is better than me at something, and that every person I meet is a person I can learn from.
I completely agree. Putting oneself over and over again to relive the experience of being a novice is great form to avoid intellectual arrogance. Once again, every time you start a new game, you have to exercise your learning models because you are going to be presented to a whole new world with a different set of rules: “what works best in this domain?” Naturally, by undergoing this behavior the person will tend to hone their learning models, or in other words, their ability to learn how to learn.
What changed?
When we were kids, many of us took 7–8 subjects in school at the same time. After school, many of these lucky kids rushed to softball practice and then changed clothing quickly for their dance rehearsals or Saturday language classes. It was easy to switch gears and learn multiple things at the same time. Now that we are adults, why do so many people specialize in just one thing? Is it just a matter of conforming to society? If so, why can’t I conform like everyone else?
I don’t know where I’m heading in life. But one thing I know for sure is I’m never going to stop learning, I’m never going to stop going as deeply as I can into as many areas/sub-areas as possible.
Another very interesting point. Society has developed some very schizophrenic institutions. Kids in school are expected to experiment with a large set of domains and suddenly they have to decide a single career for life or they will be doomed. I agree with the author, and I think the solution is to really rethink our whole educational system. Why? First, because it is completely idiosyncratic and lacks any good explanation of why it is the way it is. Second, because it is not working anymore. I just hope that the new systems (the movement has already started and I believe it is in the beginning of an S curve) can appreciate all of the three pillar of polymathy: depth, breadth and, very importantly, integration.
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I have been trying to disseminate scientific knowledge on the social sciences for some years. It is an incredibly difficult task. In this series called the popular series on the science of polymathy studies, I take some texts that are already popular, but for some reason the author did not perform a wikipedia check and did not include the scientific work related to the phenomenon in question. I then take their text as a basis and include comments and the findings from the scientific literature. I hope the authors do not get mad since most of the ideas they present have in fact been lurking around for some time (in the case of polymathy for at least 2500 years). Besides that, every popular author has capitalized on previous efforts by great people to systematize the things they are talking about (remember “standing the shoulders of the giants?” — let’s honour the giants). In the end, I just add a scientific layer to their already popular texts. Finally, most of my references will be done by heart, so if there is something wrong or if I overlook something, please tell me.
