Geniuses, we have seen them, sometimes have heard of them, these are the people who are outliers, they redefine the rules of whatever we think is possible and sometimes make such a paradigm shift in the functioning of the world. Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Newton; these are the people who have shaped the world we live in today, not only by their innovation and discoveries but also by the extend of impact they have had on the society by large.
The world likes us to believe that geniuses are half crazy people, who are extremely good at ONE thing and complete losers at everything else? In fact, it propagates the fatal lie that – you are either a jack of all trades or a master of one. And to come to think about – it is such a misleading belief or view of the world considering that geniuses around us and from history, seem to be masters of many trades!
People often confuse specialists to be geniuses. A specialist is someone who is focused on one specific area with a specific field of study. And this allows the specialist to be extremely good at it, simply given the effort, focus, dedication and exposure that is available to the specialist. So, while the specialists could be fascinating at how they do what they do, a genius is actually multi-specialist. Newton was not only a top physicist, he was also a top sculputurist. Einstein played the Violin when teaching physics. Steve Jobs was not just good at business, he was exceptional at art, specifically – typography. In fact, he is the reason why the fonts on any computer look as beautiful as they do. The most counterintuitive thing about geniuses is that geniuses are not super experts inspite of learning such diverse things, they are super experts because they choose to learn so many diverse things.
