What's your theory of everything?
We finally have the tools to learn anything. The challenge now is connecting it all together.
Humanity has always been amazed by polymaths.
The individuals like Da Vinci and Aristotle, who have the rare ability to be experts in more than one discipline.
We try to unlock the secrets to their mythical level accomplishments.
Perhaps itâs their innate intellect and talent.
Or possibly their intense love for exploration and learning.
Those internal qualities certainly played a role.
But for centuries, a fundamental issue stood between the average person and the proficiency level of polymaths â access.
Access to education, to training, to the time and freedom to study.
Even if you had the innate intellect or talent, learning has always been a slow process.
It takes years, even decades, to reach a level of mastery in a single (let alone multiple) fields.
But weâve finally reached an era where being proficient in multiple disciplines is more accessible than ever.
And this is all thanks to technology.
Armed with an internet connection and the willingness to explore, you can easily learn how a cell works, how a business scales, or how to write a screenplay â all without years of formal study.
AI has further accelerated the process with personalized learning and quick overviews of any topic.
In short: technology has democratized the path to polymathy.
The new challenge: Thinking across fields
Technology has given us the tools to access knowledge at an accelerated pace.
But the real beauty of polymathy doesnât end at simply knowing many things from different disciplines.
Da Vinci applied art to his study of anatomy.
Aristotle wrote about ethics, biology, and politics as parts of a single whole.
They knew that pushing the boundaries of human thought wasnât just about collecting knowledge.
It was about synthesising it all into one coherent picture.
Some of the best insights Iâve gotten about sound money didnât come from finance gurus, but from physics-inspired ideas.
I now see it as a form of stored economic energy, something that flows, accumulates, and transfers.
And inflation can be seen as the invisible friction eroding our economic energy.
Connecting ideas across disciplines like this, is where the opportunity lies for us in the age of AI.
The arc ahead: Building your own theory of everything
AI isnât going to make all of us geniuses or polymaths.
But what it does is create equal opportunity to:
Explore wherever our curiosity takes us
Engage in accelerated learning
Get faster feedback
Access to a thinking partner that never tires of our endless questions
Ultimately, itâs presenting us with the tools to develop the polymath mindset.
The chance to build coherence and create our very own personal âtheory of everythingâ.
Not just in the physics sense â but in terms of how you make sense of the world.
What patterns do you see between the topics you care about?
What principles connect the ideas, disciplines, and experiences that shape your thinking?
We all have access to infinite knowledge now.
The question is:
How will you connect it all together?
P.S. Are you an executive struggling to polish your thought leadership articles? Get my free 5-day email course on editing thought leadership content so it actually showcases your expertise. Itâll be useful whether you use AI or not. I bring my experience as a journalist with work featured in New Scientist, SLATE, Forge, Elemental, and more.