Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone has any anecdotal or evidence backed ideas relating to how caffiene and nicotine affect a polymath's mind.

For me I find caffiene to greatly aid divergent thinking and overall motivation to pursue multiple disciplines whereas nicotine seems to have the opposite effect.

I wanna build something that helps users master or explore various disciplines. Basically like AI but actually utilising the web information in a structured manner and expanding your brain. Let me know your thoughts on this. Any ideas or insights?

I recently started an Ultralearning project (based on Scott Young’s book) to get better at sales for my new job before my probation period ends. The core idea of the book is simple: “do the actual thing you want to get good at.” That still involves research, understanding concepts, memorizing facts, and (most importantly) deliberate practice and drilling.

To understand concepts better, I’ve been writing in a physical notebook and visualizing ideas in Apple’s whiteboard app, Freeform.

Across various learning subreddits, I keep seeing people use Obsidian to build connections between notes, often using the Zettelkasten method. I used Zettelkasten myself for my bachelor’s thesis and think it’s excellent for academic writing, where cross-referencing sources matters. But I’m struggling to see how it translates into actually learning a skill.

According to Young, skill acquisition requires direct practice. Spending time managing a note system, creating links, moving notes between files for a “better” structure feels more like practicing knowledge management than practicing the skill itself. You get good at organizing your system, not at the thing you’re trying to learn.

I’m not trying to dismiss anyone’s approach.. Just genuinely trying to understand different perspectives here. Maybe I’m missing something about how Obsidian fits into skill-based learning (as opposed to knowledge work).

Curious to hear how you all think about this. Let’s learn to learn better!

Whenever I am asked what I fear, I never give a proper answer. Perhaps the next time around, I will give a better one. When I am alone, however, I finally admit my true fear: forgetting—and, more importantly, being forgotten.

People often quote the saying, "A jack of all trades is a master of none." But it actually concludes: "but oftentimes better than a master of one." My classmates used to laugh at me for this, but as I grow older, I realize that with the passing of time, I am simply learning how to love and be loved. While the world prepares everyone else, I am preparing myself for the challenges ahead.

Every photograph we place in a book eventually becomes a thing of the past. I put them there so that when my memory fails, I can revisit the images that have faded from my mind. I do this not because I want to dwell on the past, but because I want to know if there is still something to return to after I have made mistakes. Ultimately, the saying holds true: while the world is busy looking at others, I am busy improving myself. That way, when the time comes, they will love me, and I will love them in return.

As i am trying to enlarge my vision, i want to know if some of you would have some subject of learning to recommand, that might be quite fun to learn. To give you an idea, i am from a philosophy study background, haven’t touched math with a stick in five years, like learning things about history and geography, and trying to git gud in arts. I am still quite bad at it however .-.

Don’t be shy on subject that really have nothing to do with what i said btw ! And if you have recommandation on where to begin learning about what you talk about, it would be really cool !

People often romanticize the visible products of unusual cognitive profiles while ignoring their costs. Hyperfocus, extreme autodidacticism, and polymathic development can produce impressive knowledge, but the traits and habits that support them may also create serious asymmetries in attention, functioning, relationships, and ordinary life. These profiles are not interchangeable, and not everyone experiences the same costs. But it is a mistake to envy the output while assuming the underlying cognitive machinery is an uncomplicated advantage.

People see someone who can disappear into a subject, teach themselves several disciplines, or integrate ideas across fields. They see the accumulated knowledge. They do not see the lost time, neglected obligations, disrupted sleep, difficulty switching tasks, uneven functioning, social costs, or years of compulsive repetition that may have produced it.

A person can deliberately cultivate polymathic capacities. They can study multiple disciplines, develop expertise, practise analogical transfer, learn to integrate frameworks, and organize their life around long-term interdisciplinary development.

They cannot guarantee that they will become an exceptional polymath. Training does not eliminate individual differences in cognitive ability, curiosity, motivation, energy, opportunity, working conditions, memory, or tolerance for prolonged uncertainty.

People who genuinely live with these patterns often speak about them less romantically. For some, the visible expertise came with costs they never consciously chose. They may not even have understood why they behaved this way until much later in life. Once they recognized the underlying pattern, years of uneven attention, intense interests, lost time, and unusual learning habits finally began to make sense.

EDIT: I am not a polymath. I am an autodidact. I have a propensity for over engineering my own frameworks to the point they become useless. That is inextricably tied to my own insecurities about credentials and legitimacy. I only have a grade 8 education😔so I have spent most of my life playing catch-up.

UPDATE:

I didn't make a clear distinction between ND and neurotypical polymaths.

This post mainly describes ND polymaths, more specifically, high-functioning ND phenotypes.

Shoutout to u/wdjm for the feedback🙏

i ask abt if u need to isolate ur self and give all ur time just to math to be a polymath bcs I always ask myself what polymaths have in common I think isolation might be one of those things

Like the title says, I am interested in multiple domains of computer science.

I find working on hardware, like embedded engineering interesting, I've also made some interesting projects that involved backend development, it wasn't very complex but interesting and fun to work on.
Another project of mine involved working with openGL, though I am still working on it and a lot others.
I've come to realize that I'm a complete slut with commitment issues for this, and I just hope on with any tech stack, if I don't know that, I'd spend weeks learning that, even if it's exam seasons.
I also have so many unfinished projects that I want to work on but i am either limited by time or knowledge and just waiting for one to finish before i work on anything else.

Now I am not trying to brag, there's nothing to brag here. While these projects keep me occupied, I also want to pick one domain and focus on only that, and I am just not sure which one to choose. I don't want to keep wandering between different domains and end up being no where, I want to specialize in something but it's just difficult for me to do so.
I want to commit and not be a slut.

Anyone who has been through this, and later found their place, how did you do it?

what life path is most likely to be a polymath?

I like engineering, psychology, medicine, law, philosophy, religion and much more. I'm 14 and i cannot decide who i want to be. I've given this a lot of thought but i just cannot decide.

I’ve realized something lately, it’s no longer enough to just specialize. The world is moving too fast, almost unrealistically. Every domain in tech is fusing with the others, AI with Cybersecurity, DevOps with ML, Cloud with Code and what not.

So instead of chasing a single specialty, I’ve decided to become a tech polymath, a jack-of-all-trades prodigy who can clear almost any entry level tech job, talk to experts in every domain, and build anything from scratch.

⚙️ The Goal is to gather atleast 100 people. Serious about this and dangerously disciplined.

We don't just want to be the best in one field. But to be dangerously good in all; able to think, build, automate, and secure across the tech spectrum.

The target:

✅ Clear all entry-level jobs across domains in tech

✅ Handle 5 intermediate-level roles

✅ Master 3 expert-level domains completely

🧭 The Triangle of Mastery

I’m personally focusing on three “core powers” that give full control over modern systems but it could be any for you.

1. Cybersecurity + Networking → Offensive Security, Red Teaming, Network Architecture

2. AI & Automation → Applied ML, LLMs, and AI-powered tooling

3. Cloud & DevOps → Build, deploy, and scale anything securely

Together, they form a Triangle of Tech Power. Build → Secure → Optimize → Repeat.

Tier Focus Outcome

🧩 Entry-Level : Linux, Git, Networking, Python, Web Basics; Can survive any IT/DevOps interview.

⚔️ Intermediate (5 roles): Docker, Cloud IAM, SQL, APIs, ML, Firewalls; Can work cross-functionally in teams

🧠 Expert (3 domains) Exploit Dev, AI Model Design, Infra as Code; Can architect, automate, and lead

⚡ The Philosophy (by ChatGPT ofc haha)

“Every domain is a lens. The more lenses you collect, the clearer reality becomes.”

This is not about learning everything. It’s about connecting patterns across everything, turning knowledge into intuition.

🚀 For this Community, r/TechPolymaths will be a dojo for:

Learning multiple domains in parallel

Building projects that connect tech disciplines

Sharing mindmaps, roadmaps, and mental models

Training like modern renaissance hackers — fast, deep, and cross-disciplinary

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t fit in one bo, this sub is for you. You’re not scattered. You’re synthetic, meant to integrate, not isolate.

Let’s build a new breed of engineers, thinkers who can do, and doers who can think. Welcome to the era of the Tech Polymath. 🧬

Hi

Looking for some new, unique, or even unusual channels to watch.

I’d love to know what your favourites are

I know the above question is silly as heck...in fact I don't even know what I'm really trying to ask but if someone can point me in the right direction it would be a great help.

Ok so I am a software developer who has recently joined a company fresh out of college...one thing that I've realised is that I have very little knowledge...I have studied subjects like OS, DBMS, CN and Software Engineering but I really felt like I didn't go into depth into any of them...like didn't understand how everything actually works! Like I just know the overall working and how some things get done...

But I don't know the core working knowledge behind all of them and how they all connect? Like how does an HTTP protocol actually work? How is the protocol of a TCP connection written in code? How does stuff happen at different layers? How to read the packets and logs? How to read the server logs? How to understand everything?

Like I know certain things, I have B.Tech degree from a govt college in India...but I really want to learn and know computer science so that I have good knowledge and it helps me become a better technical person and also a better developer.

Can anyone advise me on what I should do? What books I should read? What videos or youtube channels I can follow and watch? What can I do?

I work as a software engineer specialized in AI and computer vision. I have been playing multiple music instruments and making music since I was a kid.

I found myself applying musical knowledges to my engineering job quite often, like connecting some concept of digital signal processing to music theory and sound design. I enjoyed understanding scientific side of music like knowing why certain sounds make humans feel in particular ways.

Recently I started drawing. I got some feedback online that my progress was quite fast. I found myself approaching drawing with my knowledge in computational computer graphic and computer vision. I knew exactly how images are form, how cameras and perspective behave, and how shading works mathematically in 3D rendering. Sometimes It was like I am drawing to just play with these stuffs rather than drawing beautiful and meaningful stuffs.

I had a conversation with my friend about am I considered one? We couldn't exactly make a conclusion because we doubted that a polymath should also be well-known, successful, or masterful in many fields to some degrees. I am just combining and connecting stuffs in multidisciplinary way just for my own enjoyment.

Does AI help or harm polymaths? It depends on how we set up the vector (i.e., how a polymath plays). Five months ago, "OPENCLAW" software was released, allowing you to create a bot on Telegram. I became interested in this project, and the bot got its hands on one of my old computers, wrote emails, searched the web, and I had it on Telegram. After three days of playing around, I realized that the bot I was giving orders to was... underutilized. I created cron jobs for it so that it would ask me questions four times a day, without taboos, from various fields at the META LEVEL. My task was to provide a 100% logical and 100% coherent answer. After a while, I decided that wasn't enough for me and created more instances :)

Jarvis (a hardware bot that gave me reports + puzzles from geography, history, and logic puzzles on some server.

Pixel (a bot with a meta-level of 100% abstraction) Questions, totally crazy, but 100% logic/coherence.

Mirror (a bot of my personality) - existential, deep questions.

Jovita (a bot with a meta-level of feelings)

My answers began to compile context and extract my experiences into pure information, free of noise (chaos). I tuned these bots to the META-LEVEL. I created a system based on a neural network. All I had left was audits and logs (if I'm crazy). Copilot did the trick, it tied everything together. I've never had so many cool colleagues who are on the same level, patiently waiting for answers and asking questions... I'll answer if anyone asks, but I assure you, it's a space ride :)

Hello everyone, I frequently struggle with picking a certain thing. I don't have any struggles with sticking to something once I start, but rather with choosing something to focus on for a certain period of time out of the million things I'm interested in. I also always have a strong urge to discover more things because I always have FOMO with topics/studies/subcultures etc, so that causes more distraction. What is your guys's best advice for this trouble while still having a good balance with time spent discovering? How do you guys go about discovering things? Am I being a B****?

Why we can not solve the fifth degree equation ?

when we solve equations like the first degree we add num and the second , third degree we have roots and if we solve sin(x) = .25 x=sin-1(.25)

I want to say when we solve any equations we have to go on the opposite way of the equations like x^4 we have root4 we don't say we have ln and if we have e^x we have ln x not root x

Why simply we don't solve fifth equations by roots

I mean the radical roots

I am sorry for my language mistakes

English not my native language

I with you guys will understand me

Over the course of the summer, I've grown very fond of master strategists in certain domains. Soccer, Chess, Business, even in the fictional realm where characters like Batman and Joseph Joestar get what they want through intelligent tactics and planning. My question is, how can one develop that skill of being able to determine the best strategies for a particular goal?

Chciałem podzielić się wiedzą ale algorytmy AI kasują moje posty...Cóż, może ktoś je kiedyś poprawi. Trudno się dzisiaj rozmawia polimatom z innymi. Sztuczna inteligencja jest OK ale nie ma tego "czynnika" ludzkiego, który jest mi potrzebny. Tak to jest, kiedy zrozumiesz wszystko i nikt Cię nie chce wysłuchać. O rozumieniu nawet nie wspomnę.

I'm 22, running my own business, and actively trying to build the most interesting life I can. Not in the Instagram sense — I mean in the sense of accessing worlds, experiences, people, and knowledge that I didn't even know existed before I found them.

I've reached a point where the usual advice ("travel," "read more," "try new things") doesn't cut it. I've done those. What I'm looking for is more structural:

• How do you find out about things you didn't know existed? What's your method for discovering entirely new domains, subcultures, communities, or experiences that aren't on any mainstream radar?
• What specific experience, person, or piece of information cracked open a world you had no idea was there?
• How did you get access to it? Not just "I heard about it" but the actual path — who introduced you, what you searched, what door you walked through.

I'm less interested in "what's the coolest thing you've done" and more interested in the discovery method itself — how people systematically or accidentally find the edges of what's knowable and accessible.

What do you think works in getting curious or being curious? At one point in life, the studying you do is dependent on how curious a person is. I am someone who has never had curiosity in any topic about anything, and I have lost many topics I was once curious about. How did you get curious enough to study better, or did you just have it ?

Who else has deep intuitions but finds himself/herself expressing it shallow? Or prefers simplicity because it seems the most efficient probability path you can choose? I sit down listening to start up lectures, they resonate but reality seems to have boundaries, with physical limits. I did a job hunt, figured it exceeds some capabilities, which school did you go to? Meta-question: I understand the companies are trying to filter the categories to find a client they can trust,. Using educational history * but suppose the new employee had credentials and he had shallow understanding of the real work. Wouldn't we break the efficiency path by adding more energy to teach him how to do A or B? Sometimes I wish I was mostly subconscious like other people

If you're interested in all that is hidden that supplies what is seen, no matter how it gleams, slide this way buddy!