Content

• To step
• Method 1 of 3: Cultivate curiosity
• Method 2 of 3: Scientific thinking
• Method 3 of 3: Exercise creativity
• Tips
• Warnings

Leonardo da Vinci was the ultimate Renaissance man: a gifted scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. Whether you want to cultivate curiosity, creativity or scientific thinking, taking Leonardo da Vinci as a role model is an excellent idea. To learn how to start thinking like a grandmaster of the brain, see Step 1 for more information.

To step

Method 1 of 3: Cultivate curiosity

1. Question wisdom and authority received. True innovation requires, like Leonardo da Vinci, to question accepted answers to complex questions, and actively form your own opinions and observations about the world in which you live. Leonardo relied more on his senses and intuition than on the "wisdom" of others, both in his time and before, and he relied on himself and how he experienced the world to shape his view of the world.
   • For Leonardo, curiosity meant looking both forward and back, looking beyond the accepted wisdom of the Christian Bible to engage in conversation with the ancients, studying Greek and Roman texts and philosophical ways of thinking, the scientific method and art.
   • Practice: View an angle of a particular issue, concept or topic on which you have a strong opinion from the opposite point of view. Even if you are sure you "understand" what makes a painting great, or how a string quartet is put together, or know all about the melting of the polar caps, be sure to explore dissent and alternative ideas. Make an argument for the opposite of what you believe. Play devil's advocate.
2. Risk mistakes. A creative thinker will not hide in the comfortable blanket of safe opinions, but will seek the truth mercilessly, even at the risk of being completely wrong. Let your curiosity and enthusiasm for topics rule your mind, not the fear of being wrong. Embrace mistakes as possibilities and think and act in such a way that you risk mistakes. Greatness risks failure.
   • Leonardo da Vinci enthusiastically studied physiognomy, a pseudoscience that taught that facial features and character were related. It has now been completely debunked, but in Leonardo's time it was a fashionable concept, and may have contributed significantly to his innovative interest in our understanding of detailed anatomy. While we may see it as "wrong," it may be better to see it as a kind of stepping stone to a greater truth.
   • Practice: Find a dated, debunked, or controversial idea and learn as much as you can about it. Think what it would mean to see the world in this alternative way. Explore the Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit, the Hell's Angels, or Christian Theosophy, and learn about their view of the world and the historical context of their organization. Were they, or are they, "wrong"?
3. Go on a fearless knowledge hunt. The curious thinker embraces the unknown, the mysterious and the terrifying. To learn about anatomy, Leonardo spent countless hours studying corpses in not very sterile conditions, compared to current morgues. His thirst for knowledge far outweighed his reluctance, and led to his pioneering study of the human body and model drawings.
   • Practice: Research a topic that scares you. Does the end of the world fill you with fear? Investigate Eschatology and the Apocalypse. Afraid of vampires? Get your teeth into Vlad the Impaler. Do you get nightmares from nuclear war? Study J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project.
4. Explore how things are connected. Curious thinking means looking for patterns in ideas and images, finding similarities that connect diverse concepts instead of differences. Leonardo da Vinci could never have invented the "mechanical horse" that would become his bicycle without connecting apparently unrelated concepts: horseback riding and simple gears. Try to find common ground in your interpersonal interactions, and look for the things you feel connected to around an idea or issue, the things you can get out of, instead of seeing them as "wrong."
   • Practice: Close your eyes and draw random scribbles or lines on a page, then open your eyes and finish the drawing you started. Look at the nonsense and give this sentence. Make a list of words that just come to mind and use them all in the same poem or story, looking for a storyline in the chaos.
5. Draw your own conclusions. The curious thinker is not satisfied with received wisdom and accepted answers, and instead chooses to either substantiate those accepted answers with observations and observations from real life, or to form new conceptions based on a worldly experience.
   • Of course, this doesn't mean that you can't validate Australia's existence because you haven't seen it for yourself, but that you don't have an opinion about it until you know all you can about it, and have experienced that knowledge for yourself.
   • Practice: Think about a time when your opinion was changed by someone or something. It can be as simple as changing your mind about a movie you liked because all your friends thought the opposite and you wanted to join it. Go back and watch that movie again with new eyes.

Method 2 of 3: Scientific thinking

1. Ask probing questions. Sometimes the simplest questions are the most complex. How does a bird fly? Why is the sky blue? These are the kinds of questions that led Leonardo da Vinci to his innovative genius and scientific study. It was not enough for Da Vinci to hear "Because it is God's will," when the answer was much more complex and less abstract. Learn to form penetrating questions about the things that interest you and test them to get results.
   • Practice: Write down at least five questions about a topic that fascinates you and you would like to know more about.Instead of searching Wikipedia and forgetting about it altogether, you choose one question from that list and sit on it for at least a week. How do mushrooms grow? What is coral? What is a soul? Examine it in the library. Write about it. Draw over it. Think about it.
2. Test your hypotheses with your own observations. When you have started to form your own opinion on a particular topic or question, when you think you have almost a satisfactory answer, you determine which criteria would be sufficient to accept or reject that answer. What would prove you right? What would prove you wrong? How can you test your idea?
   • Practice: Come up with a testable theory for your probing question and design an investigation using the scientific method. Gather some substrate and grow your own mushrooms to learn about different methods, techniques and species.
3. Go all the way to the end with your ideas. The scientific thinker questions ideas until all lines of thought have been checked, examined, verified, or rejected. Ask all possible questions. Regular thinkers often pin themselves to one of the first satisfying options or answers, ignoring the more interesting or complex questions that could be more accurate. If you want to think like Leonardo da Vinci, you will leave no stone unturned in your quest for truth.
   • Practice: Do mind mapping. This is a powerful tool that can help you combine logic and imagination in your work and life, the end result being a web-like structure of words and ideas that are somehow related in your mind, making it easier to reach all angles and to remember holes of your thoughts, whether they passed or not. Mind mapping can improve (reading) memory and creativity.
4. Build new concepts from a foundation of mistakes. A scientist embraces failed experiments in the same way that a scientist embraces successful ones: an option has been eliminated from the list of possibilities, taking you one step closer to a certain truth. Learn from hypotheses that turn out to be wrong. If you were absolutely sure that your new way of organizing a workday, writing a story, or rebuilding your bike would be perfect, and it turned out not to be, then celebrate! You've completed an experiment and learned what won't work next time.
   • Practice: Think back to a certain failure. List all the things you learned from it that you will be able to do more effectively from now on as a direct result of that failure.

Method 3 of 3: Exercise creativity

1. Keep a detailed and illustrated journal. Much of what we now see as priceless art was really just Leonardo da Vinci's daily sketchbook, which he kept not because he was actively trying to create a masterpiece, but because being creative was such an integral part of his everyday life that it became the way he processed thoughts, by writing them down with accompanying illustrations. Writing forces you to think in a different way, to articulate your vague thoughts as specifically and concretely as possible.
   • Practice: Make a list of topics on which you will keep an extensive journal for a day. Big topics you have an opinion on, like "television" or "Bob Dylan" can be perfect. Start addressing the issue by writing "About Dylan" at the top of the page and writing about it and drawing whatever comes to your mind. If you get to a point where you are unsure about, do some research. Learn more.
2. Write descriptively. Cultivate a rich vocabulary and use accurate words in your descriptions. Use similes, metaphors, and analogies to grasp abstract concepts and find connections between your ideas, constantly checking your train of thought. Describe things in terms of the senses - touch, smell, taste, feeling - and also in terms of their importance, their symbolism as you experience them, and their significance.
   • Practice: Read Charles Simic's poem "Fork". In it he describes a very everyday object both accurately and with a strange set of eyes.
3. Have a clear view. One of Leonardo's mottos was saper vdere (know how to see), on which he built his work in art and science. While keeping your diary, develop a keen eye on the world to see clear details. Write down images you see all day long, flashy things, graffiti, gestures, weird shirts, strange words, anything that strikes you. Write it down. Become an encyclopedia of small moments and record those moments in words and images.
   • Practice: You don't have to keep a diary like you did in the 15th century. Use your phone's camera to take lots of photos on the way to work and liven up your journey. Force yourself to find and take photos of 10 striking images along the way. On your way home, you look at the photos from the morning and think about what was striking about you. Find connections in the chaos.
4. Have a broad view. Leonardo da Vinci is the Platonic ideal of the Renaissance man: Leonardo stood out as a scientist, artist and inventor, and would no doubt be confused and frustrated with modern notions of a "career". It's hard to imagine he dragged himself into the office every morning, did his job, and went home to watch "House of Cards." If you are interested in a topic or project that is beyond your everyday experiences, call it an opportunity rather than a challenge. Embrace the luxury of modern life for the direct access we have to information, the freedom we have to pursue experiences, and the limitlessness of it.
   • Practice: Make a wish list with topics and project you want to achieve in the coming months or years. Have you always wanted to write a novel? Learn to play banjo? There's no point in sitting around and waiting for it to happen. You are never too old to learn.

Tips

• Some of Da Vinci's traits you'll want to recreate include:
  • charisma
  • generosity
  • love for nature
  • love for animals
  • a child's curiosity
• Read books. People like Da Vinci didn't have TV for entertainment, they read!

Warnings

• Because of his wide variety of interests, he apologized on his deathbed to God and the people for leaving so much of his work undone.