The Da Vinci Curse

The Da Vinci Curse explains why people with many talents don’t fit into a world where we need specialists and, if you have many talents yourself, shows you how you can lift this curse, by giving you a framework to follow and find your true vocation in life.

Who do you go to when you wake up and your back hurts? Your physician. Who do you go to, if it still hurts the next week? Your chiropractor. If it becomes a chronic thing, you’ll probably go to a physical therapist. Worst case scenario, you’ll end up on a spinal reconstruction surgeon’s table.

The world we live in thrives on specialists. Back in Leonardo Da Vinci‘s days, it was perfectly fine to have a rough idea of anatomy, be able to read only 25% of all words and earn your living as a farmer. Knowing a lot of stuff was not only easier, because there was less stuff to know, it was also a lot more reasonable financially.

But the amount of available knowledge has completely exploded, especially in the past 25 years, thanks to the internet. It’s impossible for you to be an expert in many things. If you want to be a Youtuber, become a great consultant, and a top notch chef all at once, you’re in for a tough decision. You can only master a highly complex skill, if you dedicate yourself to it entirely.

This is a huge bummer for multi-talented people (like you and me). That’s because we’re incredibly curious, but find it hard to commit to just one thing for a long time. Even if we could, we don’t fancy the idea of throwing out 99% of our passions. But the world rewards specialists, which makes us feel bad for not focusing, so over time we get the idea that we just don’t fit in.

So what can you do about it? First of all, so-called Da Vinci people like you and me tend to run away from two things, which we shouldn’t: competition and criticism. It’s easy to practice the perfect basketball free throw all by yourself, become a great hoops shooter and then quit before you ever play with others. Your pride is left intact and you get to tell yourself: “This isn’t that hard, I could totally become great if I really wanted to.” This spares you having to face cruel, but crucial criticism and that you’re probably still very much a beginner, like all masters once were. You just switch fields and learn the basics of something else. But that means you never get the feedback you would’ve needed to get to the next level in what you were doing before.…