Book: Leonardo da Vinci

Book: Leonardo da Vinci, Walter Isaacson

Attempting to summarize 624 pages...

Be curious, relentlessly curious. "I have no special talents," Einstein once wrote to a friend, "I am just passionately curious."

• Relentless curious explorer

• Applied creativity

Ability to make connections across disciplines in arts and science; humanities and technology. Avoid silos. At the end of many of his product presentations, Jobs displayed a slide of a sign that showed the intersection of "Liberal Arts" and "Technology" streets. He knew that at such crossroads lay creativity. Leonardo had a free-range mind that merrily wandered across all the disciplines of the arts, sciences, engineering, and humanities. 

Think visually. 

He knew that art was a science and that science was an art.

Seek knowledge for its own sake. Not all knowledge needs to be useful. Sometimes it should be pursued for pure pleasure. 

Retain a childlike sense of wonder. At a certain point in life, most of us quit puzzling over everyday phenomena. Einstein wrote to a friend, "You and I never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.," 

Observe. Leonardo's greatest skill was his acute ability to observe things. 

Start with the details. In his notebook, Leonardo shared a trick for observing something carefully: Do it in steps, starting with each detail. "If you wish to have a sound knowledge of the forms of objects, begin with the details of them, and do not go on to the second step until you have the first well fixed in memory."

See things unseen

Go down rabbit holes. He filled the opening pages of one of his notebooks with 169 attempts to square a circle. In eight pages of his Codex Leicester, he recorded 730 findings about the fow of water. He drilled down for the pure joy of gecking out. 

Get distracted. The greatest rap on Leonardo was that these passionate pursuits caused him to wander off on tangents, literally in the case of his math inquiries. 

His eye made his mind richer and filled with more connections.

Respect facts. Leonardo was a forerunner of the age of observational experiments and critical thinking.

We have to be fearless about changing our minds based on new information.

Procrastinate. While painting The Last Supper, Leonardo would sometimes stare at the work for an hour, finally make one small stroke, and then leave. 

"Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, he explained, "for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

Let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Jobs embraced a counter-maxim, "Real artists ship," which means that sometimes you ought to deliver a product even when there are still improvements that could be made. That is a good rule for daily life. But there are times when it's nice to be like Leonardo and not let go of something until it's perfect.

Let your reach exceed you grasp. 

There are some problems we will never solve.  Learn why.

Indulge fantasy. 

Create for yourself, not just for patrons. 

Collaborate, Genius is often considered the purview of loners who retreat to their garrets and are struck by creative lightning. Genius starts with individual brilliance. It requires singular vision. But executing it often entails working with others. Innovation is a team sport. Creativity is a collaborative endeavor.

Make lists. And be sure to put odd things on them. Leonardo's to-do lists may have been the greatest testaments to pure curiosity the world has ever seen.

Take notes, on paper. Five hundred years later, Leonardo's notebooks are around to astonish and inspire us. Fifty years from now, our own notebooks, if we work up the initiative to start writing them, will be around to astonish and inspire our grandchildren, unlike our tweets and Facebook posts.

Be open to mystery. Not everything needs sharp lines.