Brain: How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci

Cover via Amazon

"In this post, I present a summary of the mind-expanding bestseller How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day, along with some thoughts about Leonardo and the book.

Leonardo is not only probably the greatest genius ever: he’s the one that most fully embodies the ‘Renaissance Man‘ ideal. Pursuing that ideal means being focused not on excelling on a single knowledge domain, but on having a holistic view of excellence in life. It means much more than just intellectual achievement, it means full realization of human potential in every aspect.

In How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, author Michael Gelb does a superb job of capturing the essence of Leonardo’s genius and laying it out in a practical framework for self-improvement. Here are the 7 key areas that shaped Leonardo’s genius and which you can use as a framework for your own self-improvement..."

By Luciano Passuello
litemind.com

From Denny: One of the key areas of Da Vinci's steps for self-improvement that contributed easily to creative problem-solving is "Sfumato: A willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty." This is where I think many experts fall down on the job. It's also why so many of their pronouncements come off sounding childish and off-kilter at times be it from the science, medical or academic communities.

The past eight years of fundamentalism affecting our politics, religion and educational communities has caused a reversal back to simplistic concrete thinking. Concrete thinking doesn't allow for ambiguity, the large grey zone between black and white that takes into account a myriad of things - like shifting time lines affected by our perceptions and resulting decisions.