The Da Vinci Curse

Doctors who specialize in spinal surgery, psychologists with expertise in adolescent schizophrenia, physicists who study gravitational waves: The list of specialists in today’s society is long – and for good reason.

In fact, specialists have never been more important than today.

This is because knowledge has been rapidly growing since Da Vinci’s era in the sixteenth century. And as knowledge accumulates, expertise becomes more and more important.

Take the spinal surgeon. The intricacies of the spine demand absolute precision during surgery. That’s why it requires years of specialized training to acquire the expertise necessary to not make a single mistake.

This means that someone who is interested in spinal surgery, but also wants to be a maestro on the violin and become a top chef, will have to make a tough decision: if you want to master a highly complex skill, you can only dedicate yourself to one thing.

Indeed, this is the struggle of all multi-talented people.

Multi-talented people feel a strong drive to realize all their talents, but fear that they don’t have enough time. Furthermore, they are typically highly curious, but struggle to commit to the practice that mastery requires. They get fascinated by a new field and dive into it with a passion. But once they’ve mastered the basics, the initial appeal fades away.

Take the author as an example. He fell in love with classical music when he was 18 and began learning the violin. But only a few months later, his interest vanished, he stopped going to classes, and he moved on to something else.