summary of "How to think like Leonardo da Vinci"

Executive summary of “How to think like Leonardo da Vinci, seven steps to genius everyday”

Wenting Jiang

The life of Leonardo da Vinci is amazing and many of his achievements are extraordinary even from the aspect of this modern world. The core of his beautiful life is himself as a independent thinker and his unique and efficient way of thinking. The author first introduces the life and achievement of Leonardo da Vinci and then concludes 7 steps from his life as a thinker and encourages us to learn and think. Those 7 steps are as follows:

Curiosita --- insatiably curious approach to life and unrelenting quest for continuous learning

Curiosity is one of the basic motivations for us to move forward, it starts from the childhood, but the strength of it becomes less and less throughout our study life as the teacher usually asks just for a unique correct answer, but no place for the student to imagine and think broader. The author provides many good ways for us to pick up our curiosity to the world again. Keeping a notebook or journal to write down thoughts during the daily life, also the stream of consciousness is helpful. Ask questions to yourself like what, how, why, and among these, “why” is the most important one, as keeping asking “why” will guide you all the way to the bottom of the issue.

Dimostrazione --- commitment to test knowledge through experience, persistence

Test your knowledge from experience, made your opinions truly your own and notice the source of your opinions. As Leonardo did, dissect the corpse in three different angles; view an object, belief, opinions in three different ways. Learn from mistakes. Acknowledge them, don’t fear of making mistakes, don’t doubt yourself and believe the things deeply in your heart. Create affirmations of yourself. Learn from anti models to tell you what not to do.

Sensazione --- the continual refinement of the senses, especially sight, as the means to enliven experience

Development of senses, especially sights which I think the most difficult part for us as in such a crowed and busy modern world. It requires quite elegant ways and plenty of time and patience to develop and feel them. It includes vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch and synesthesia. There are many methods described in the book to develop each sense. They all begin from the most basic to higher level and more sensitive. The sense it mentioned is a mental feeling of everything around you, many of them may be hidden from you for now, but if you pay enough attention on them, you will find it quite interesting and elegant. The most impressive example mentioned in the book for me is that the author classified many famous composers to different elements, such as, “earth” for Beethoven, “fire” for Stravinsky, “water” for Debussy and “air” for Mozart. I didn’t ever aware of that when I listen to their masterpieces, but it’s extremely meaningful and brilliant description for them when I saw it from the book. The other interesting methods include “picture your favorite scene” to develop visualization, active listening, olfactory cornucopia, draw music, make sounds of colors and so on.

Sfumato --- willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty

To embrace the paradox, ambiguity, uncertainty and the tension of the opposite is also a important point of a great thinker. Just like Leonardo did in Mona Lisa, for the painting, the maestro try to show his idea of paradox and the mystery of her smile guide us to a world of ambiguous and uncertainty. Many ways can achieve the Sfumaro, like making friends with ambiguity, to observe and tolerate anxiety, cultivate confusion endurance, even more, standing with the paradox work Mona Lisa and observe it will help developing this skill. Also, take a little relaxation from work would help getting better ideas.

Arte/Scienza --- the development of the balance between science and art, logic and imagination

For the fully use of your both right and left hemisphere of your brain, a simple method can be used for training of effective thinking, which is mind mapping. This method is to draw a map of a particular subject to represent the information. It just contains keywords, images, but never the whole context, and connect them with each other just like your mind do, neurons connected together by synapse. For the beginning of the training, it’s better to start from some simple objective.

Corporalita --- the cultivation of grace, ambidexterity, fitness, and poise

Leonardo has a legendary physical fitness and this gift grants him passion and complements his intellectual and artistic genius. To apply this rule, three steps should be completed. First, develop a fitness program, including aerobic conditioning, strength training and so on, next, the body awareness of your own should be developed, studying some practical anatomy would be helpful, at last, cultivate ambidexterity is important, which includes using of your non-dominant hand.

Connessione --- a recognition of and appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things and phenomena, system thinking

This is the final stage to a great thinker, which is the ability to connect everything together and think it as a whole new object. Just as Leornardo said, “everything comes from everything, and everything is made out of everything, and everything returns into everything…” Combination of different things make the thinking more complete and easy to find the most elegant way to solve problems. The method to approach it includes looking at things that at first glance seem unrelated, and find different ways to link them, Imaginary dialogues and Origin-all thinking.

As one of the best independent thinker in the world, these 7 rules from Leonardo are definitely valuable to learn, practice and apply. The book provides many questions, self assessment and practical ways to help you to do better. It is so fascinating that I cannot help myself to try some of them, and found it amazingly useful. After the practice, I know better about myself, and about how to improve my way of thinking to be more independent, efficient and elegant. I think that is the object of this book, to make everyone think better, do better, and the world would be better.